Deep State and the Potemkin Village of the US democracy
"Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex." ~Frank Zappa (1986)
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something.
They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they
better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." -- Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
DEEP STATEn. A hard-to-perceive level of government or super-control that exists regardless of elections
and that may thwart popular movements or radical change. Some have said that Egypt is being manipulated by its deep state.
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment.It has
become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government.... I never had any thought that when I set up
the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations."
President Harry Truman
"For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for
expanding its sphere of influence - on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation
instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.
It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly
efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its
preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No
expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed."
President John_F._Kennedy, speech on April 27, 1961
While the rank-and-file military are among the most patriotic of Americans and show unwavering support for the Constitution, there
is a class of elite national security establishment who, whatever they may say on ceremonial occasions, believe they are above
the Constitution. The "national security establishment" is colloquially known as the
Deep State. In the past military leaders were part of the ruling class, intelligence agencies did not exist and there
were no danger of a rogue national security establishment in 1789. That why for all their brilliance, the Framers of the Constitution
did not foresee the emergence this treat. JFK
assassination was the Rubicon, they crossed, and the tail started wagging the dog. Brennan 2016 elections machinations
were yet another vivid demonstration that the national security establishment spinned out of control.
This threat emerged only after WWII and national security state when Truman established intelligence agencies which comprise the
core of the Deep State ( CIA, NSA FBI and Pentagon. Add to this State Department and you get what is called "Trumanites". They
brought with them the three cornerstone of the USA foreign policy
Exceptionalism - our unique status should exempt us from the rules we expect others to follow.
Militarism - favor the use of force to advance US security and priority matters of national interest.
Hegemony - America ought to fight hard not to let any other power challenge our post WWII position.
Gradually the national security bureaucracy became so large and omnipotent that the Madisonian branches of government became mainly
ceremonial institution providing legitimacy to the ruling elite via national election. Something like the British House of Lords, symbolically
important but in reality without much power. Intelligence agencies Nomenklatura, not Trump, are moving the nation toward autocracy,
operated at an increasing removed from constitutional limits and restraints manner (Welcome
to the Potemkin Village of Washington Power The American Conservative)
Tufts law professor Michael Glennon points out in a recent
essay in Humanitas that the Cold
War brought something new and ominous in military-civilian relations. The national security bureaucracy became so large and omnipotent
that the Madisonian branches of government became something like the British House of Lords, symbolically important but in reality
without much power. The executive, legislature, and judiciary became a kind of Potemkin village, with real national security power
lodged in, as Glennon describes it, “a largely concealed managerial directorate, consisting of the several hundred leaders of the
military, law enforcement and intelligence departments.” As this bureaucracy grew, Glennon argues, “those managers…operated at an
increasing remove from constitutional limits and restraints, moving the nation slowly toward autocracy.”
Glennon also points out
that, prior to Trump, there was an unwritten pact between the bureaucracy and the Madisonian government: never publicly disagree.
While national security policies have long been crafted and maintained by deep state bureaucracies, everyone played along and told
the public these were the result of “intense deliberations.” Yet a few people noticed that, whether under Republican or Democrat
administrations, national security policies never really changed, intelligence operations were never disrupted, and even peacenik-seeming
presidential candidates became warlike presidents. For decades, neither elected officials nor bureaucratic leaders publicly acknowledged
that American national security policy was being run by what Glennon describes as a “double government,” with elected officials largely
impotent.
However, with the staggering intelligence failure that was 9/11 and two protracted and losing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some
have begun to question whether the “grown-ups” in the national security bureaucracy are even competent. Trump gave voice to those
concerns in the 2016 campaign, and the result has been a breakdown in the Cold War truce between the two components of the double
government. Leaders of the national security establishment, who know they have real power, took precautions in the unlikely event
of a Trump victory and then proceeded to try to overturn Trump’s election. When they failed, they partnered with Congress to have
Trump removed through impeachment, taking full advantage of the fractured nature of civilian control of national security institutions.
Impeachment witnesses, such as Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, have been unanimous in their implicit belief that the foreign
policy of the United States should be managed by a professional class of bureaucrats, not by the elected president.
The American constitutional order is thus in great peril. Those obsessed with getting rid of the president should consider that,
were Trump to be removed, it could be the constitutional equivalent of Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon.
In the mind of ordinary American the term "Deep State" and "democracy" happily coexist. Most do not even understand that they are
infected with what in famous George Orwell novel 1984 is called "Doublethink." The existence of uncontrollable
elite in the form of the "Deep State" that core of which constitute Wall Street bankers, MIC and the top brass of the intelligence agencies is incompatible with the existence of the democracy, unless we assume that democracy exists for the top 1% or even less of the
population. It is something like modernized feudalism for all the rest. This strange, but stable combination is called
neoliberalism. As neoliberalism came to power with coup d'état facilitated by
thinks tanks specifically created for this purpose (the army of "professional revolutionaries" in Bolsheviks terms ;-)
neoliberalism and Deep State are closely interrelated. This interrelation is reflected in the Sheldon Wolin term "Inverted
totalitarianism" which is the actual name of the somewhat strange social order established in the USA since 70th which US propaganda
calls democracy.
In a way, the concept of Corporatism and the concept of "deep state"
are very close. Corporatism presuppose the merger of government and corporations. It can be done openly as was the case in Mussolini
Italy, or via back door including the "revolving door" mechanism as it was done in the USA. In both case corporations
control the government, although in Mussolity case thier absolute power is moderated by the esitable of the fascist party with its
program. In the latter case, the case of the USA inverted totalitarism regime a tiny part of power of
the "surface state" is preserved. But enough to provid the legitimacy to the rule of the "Deep State" or "Inner Party in terms
of Orwell dystopia 1984.
Deep State just adds another component to pre-existing since the end of WWII concept of military industrial complex (see
Eisenhower warning about MIC which is a warning about the victory of
corporatism in the USA ) -- intelligence agencies.
With this addition elections became simply device to legitimize the governance of the current elite, with undesirable for the elite candidates
filtered before they can compete in election by various means, including radical as was the case with JFK assassination.
Elections serve just of Potemkin village legitimizing the candidate that was chosen by tiny elite (the top 1% or 0.1% depending on
how you count).
With the exception of deep social crisis like was the
case with election of Trump, who definitely was less preferred by the deep state candidate then Hillary Clinton but manage to win
)or more correctly the faction of the elite that tanded behind Trump managed to win) due to the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA
due to which the current elite lost legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of population. And, especially, working
people and lower middle class which constitute the majority of voters. As many observers pointed out, the election of
Trump was essentially a middle finger shown to the current neoliberal elite in the USA, particularly the Clinton's wing of
Democratic Party which betrayed working class as a part of "Clintonization" of the Party in early 90th duing which it became the
party of Wall Street and later, under Obama, the second war party. The same happened with Labor Party in the UK under war
criminal Blair.
Elections serve just of Potemkin village legitimizing the candidate that was chosen by tiny elite,
an important part of which are now intelligence agencies, which
acquired
political role. The problem of control by the civil society of intelligence agencies so far is unresolved.
We can say that Deep State emerged simultaneously with powerful intelligence agencies after WWII. In case of the USA it was Truman who
created added CIA to the roster of intelligence agencies and as such he can be called a godfather of the US deep state. This concept
became more well known recently in view of color revolution against Trump launched by Clinton wing of Democratic party (so called
"soft neoliberal" wing) in association the supporting them elements of intelligence agencies such as State Department, CIA and
FBI.
The concept of the Deep State is related to the answer the another fundamental question: Can democracy exists in a state
with powerful intelligence agencies like NSA, CIA, FBI (which plays the role of counterintelligence agency in the USA; look at
Russiagate) and the State Department (which has functions, which duplicate those of CIA). Thus the concept of the
"deep state" can be viewed as a reformulation of the iron law of oligarchy on a new level (state level), explaining
the role of intelligence agencies as an immanent part of the ruling elite. For example, the neoliberals elite which rules the
USA since late 70th (Carter not Reagan was the first neoliberal president of the USA).
The concept of the Deep State is related to the answer the another fundamental question: Can democracy exists in a
state with powerful intelligence agencies like NSA, CIA, FBI
Intelligence agencies acquired a special status under corporatism. They became the backbone and the intellectual center of the
Media-Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) which
also now includes major Wall Street banks (which historically have very close ties with CIA; CIA was formed by lawyers which served
their interests such as Allen Dulles). Under neoliberalism the financial oligarchy became an important part
of MIC (especially oligarchy of such banks as Goldman Sachs and Citibank)becaue the power of the US military secure their
global expansion. Recently Silicon Valley mega corporations
also joined it. And all of them are closely connected to
NSA and CIA
(especially Amazon,
Google and Facebook). In a way, military-industrial complex mutated into Media-Military-Financial-Industrial-Silicon Valley
complex.
This is a new unelected aristocracy with huge financial resources and zero accountability. Members of this clan stand above law and can't be easily
demotes from their positions by civil authorities. They now are a new incarnation of the "royal court", or in more modern term
Nomenklatura, which can, like in old times, to depose a monarch (or Supreme Leader) or even kill him.
This is a new unelected aristocracy with huge financial resources and zero accountability. Members of this clan stand above law and can't be easily
demotes from their positions by civil authorities (on intelligence agencies level,
J. Edgar Hoover who managed to die in his official position, much like the USSR members of Politburo, is an excellent example
here). They now are a new incarnation of the "royal court", or in more modern term Nomenklatura, which can, like in old
times, to depose a monarch (or Supreme leader) or even kill him.
So in a way the concept of "deep state" implies and emphasizes the hypertrophied role of three letter agencies among
unelected government bureaucracy. They are joined at the heap with financial oligarchy, MIC and Silicon Valley in national
politics. Especially in formulating foreign policy. Influence of MIC on the US foreign policy is nothing new and power of
neocon, who are, in essence, lobbyists of MIC attests that. They dominate the USA foreign policy since then end of WWII. After
all one of the most plausible hypotheses of why JFK was killed ( most probably via CIA plot ) because his policies limited the power of
intelligences agencies (especially CIA which he hated) and international expansion which Wall Street and MIC depended upon to
maintain the current rate of profits.
But devil is always in details and some features of the USA Deep State are unique and different the deep state in other
neoliberal countries such as EU, GB, Turkey, or Russia. BTW the term "deep state" originated in Turkey.
The "deep state" victory over voters and political dominance is always "incomplete." The "surface state" is still keeping
some positions and periodically even try to counterattack deep state in certain areas (Church
Committee.) Second, the merger of interests of three letter agencies
like CIA/NSA/ FBI also has its own internal contradictions. For example NSA and CIA competes for funds. State Department, which is
forth most important intelligence agency in the USA (and the oldest of all four) now lost its independence
and can generally be viewed as a subsidiary of CIA, see Emailgate
and
Strzogate for details ). Alliance of CIA and Wall Street also can never be absolute. They have somewhat different worldviews on both the USA foreign
policy priorities and methods of achieving them. Also there is a fierce competition between intelligence agencies for state
resources, which pitch, for example, CIA against NSA and both of then against DIA (just look at
Sacrifice of Michael Flynn to neocons
story). As we can see from Syria war such differences can lead to essentially supporting hostile to each other groups of
insurgent while trying to achieve the same color revolution based "regime change" in the country.
The statement that relations between three letter agencies are far from harmonious are supported by leaked story about how CIA ('humint")
was very concerned about recent rise of status and capabilities of NSA ("sigint") and tried to duplicate its capabilities (
Vault 7 scandal) They lie to each
other and try to poach funds from the other agencies. Vault 7 scandal is a strong confirmation that CIA brass is very
concerted about increased role and influence of NSA in the era on Internet communications and is trying to counterattack and undermine
it.
Add to this a special, more independent, status and role of military intelligence which also now is not in best relations with both
CIA and NSA. Destiny of General Flynn, who served as the
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and in 2017 was entrapped by FBI with the help of NSA and CIA is a strong
sign there not much love left between DIA and other agencies (with DIA probably being the most competent of them all three). So in certain
areas they are more like spiders in the cage with CIA perfectly capable attacking NSA and DIA and vise versa. That gives us some hope.
The rise of intelligence agenizes inevitably led to conversion of the state into national security state and we can talk
about "election democracy" in such state only with great reservations. Yes some freedom to chose candidatures still exist (as
Sanders and, possibly, Trump emergence in 2016 elections attests), but the final choice is more often then not is determined
by intelligence agencies, not so much by voters (FBI derailing of Sanders in favor of establishment candidate -- Hillary Clinton
-- quite vividly attests this fact; not that Sanders fought a good fight in this respect serving more like a sheep dog in the elections).
Two party system invented by elite of Great Britain proved to be perfect for
inverted totalitarism type of regimes, including the US
neoliberalism. But there is second trend here which increase the elite control of the county: this is dramatic
transfer of power to institutions of "deep state", which in certain sense now like TBTF are beyond civil control. As well as a
secret alliance between Wall Street and CIA and other three letter agencies.
All those factors essentially make Presidential and Congress election in the USA truly optional, serving mostly ceremonial,
decorative function. Yes elections still continue to exist and sometime provide good theater, within the strict rules of an
emasculated "two parties, winner takes all" system, which if you think about it is not that different from one party elections in
the USSR.
They still have a role in legitimizing the current rulers, although actual rules are not the same as those who were elected. This
is especially true about the two recent US Presidents: George W Bush and Barack Obama. And that explains why Barack Obama
foreign policy is essentially a continuation of policy of George W Bush with minor tweaks. Just the fact that neocon
Victoria Nuland who worked for Cheney was promoted to the key role of the
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs tells that Obama controls very little in foreign policy
area and that 'deep state" is functioning autonomously and without control of "surface state".
The USA political system does not have a single government. It actually has two distinct governments. They are called "surface
state" or Madisonians and "deep state" or Trumanites (national security establishment in alliance with selected members of financial
oligarchy, media owners and technocrats). The latter term emerged because it was Harry Truman who signed
National Security Act of 1947 which
created major three letter agencies (CIA, DOD, FBI and NSA).
Simplifying the complex relation between those two US governments (sometimes Madisonians fight back and have Trumanites to make a
temporary retreat) we can say that:
The "surface state" exists mainly to provide legitimacy and the illusion of democracy and consist of traditional
three branches of government (the Congress, the presidency, and the courts.). elections does not change anything they just a
tool for providing legitimacy to government. That explains strange continuity between foreign policies of different presidents
(for example Bush and Obama; in the latter case Obama foreign policy was completely opposite is election promised)
The "deep state" is represented by unelected alliance by top level government bureaucrats (and first of
intelligence brass of three major intelligence agencies), selected members of financial oligarchy, think tanks, manufactures and
media. Its institutions (and first of all three letter agencies and military-industrial complex in general) actually create
and implement country foreign policy without any feedback from electorate (Trump complete betrayal of three key foreign
policy election promises (detente with Russia, finishing foreign wars and dissolution of NATO) is a nice example of the power and
efficiency of this mechanism). A large part of domestic policies (especially national security policy) also created and
implemented without any control of electorate and with very little control, if any, of traditional three branches of government.
Just look at PATRIOT Act.
In other words, the "Deep state" represent the actual government of the society by unelected elite, which is composed of
high-level officials within the intelligence services, military, law enforcement, judiciary and, often, organized crime. It should
be viewed as an extended and more realistic variant of military industrial complex dominance (see Media-Military-Industrial Complex) as it includes selected members of financial oligarchy along with industrialists,
Internet moguls, and media owners. In British author John le Carré’s latest novel, A Delicate Truth, a
character describes the Deep State as
“… the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly
classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster.”
Conversion of system of governance to "deep state" which happened in the USA almost immediately after 1947 essentially made
large part of federal elections including Presidential elections optional, but they still continue to exist as a ceremonial function for the sake of providing the legitimacy of the
government in an emasculated "two parties system" form. While relationship is more complex then simple dominance, in essence
"deep state" is the tail that wags the dog. And JFK assassination (Nov 22, 1963) meant first of all the triumph of "deep state"
over "surface state". In this sense 9/11 was just the last nail in the coffin of democracy.
The term “Deep State” was coined in Turkey (and actually
Wikipedia discusses only it) but it is widespread modern
phenomenon which is a typical model of governance in all major neoliberal states, including the USA, GB and France. For example, it able to govern the United
States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process. That's why elected
candidates swiftly perform "bat and switch" maneuver and conduct polices radically different from those for which they were elected.
As any elite dominance project it is deeply anti-democratic although it uses fig leaf of democracy for foreign expansion via color
revolutions and wars.
Like in Third Reich, this dominance is supported by relentless propaganda and
brainwashing with mechanisms polished since Reagan to perfection. There is now no problem to create an "enemy of the people" when
the elite wants and it does not matter which country or individual is selected as an enemy. The essence of elite politics in this
area was best formulated by Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief
Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is
understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag
the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any
country.
In other words this is a hidden set of political actors and powerful institutions that are concealed within the wider, “visible”
state which, essentially, took over the functions of traditional state, leaving such organization of Executive branch, President,
congress and courts mainly ceremonial role. Such transformation is well explained by the
Iron Law of Oligarchyand in various forms happened in Third Reich, the USSR, Turkey, China and many other countries.
“When I asked the military advisors if they could assure me that holding fast would not result in the death of five
hundred million human beings, they looked at me as though I was out of my mind, or what was worse, a traitor. The biggest
tragedy, as they saw it, was not that our country might be devastated and everything lost, but that the Chinese or the
Albanians might accuse us of appeasement or weakness. So I said to myself, “To hell with these maniacs. If I can get the
United States to assure me that it will not attempt to overthrow the Cuban government, I will remove the missiles.” That is
what happened, and now I am reviled by the Chinese and the Albanians.… They say I was afraid to stand up to a paper tiger.
It is all such nonsense. What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that though our great
nation and the United States were in complete ruins, the national honor of the Soviet Union was intact? “
“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline,
one with three matches, the other with five.” ― Carl Sagan
“When I asked the military advisors if they could assure me that holding fast would not result in the death of five hundred million human beings, they looked at me as though I was out of my mind, or what was worse, a traitor. The biggest tragedy, as they saw it, was not that our country might be devastated and everything lost, but that the Chinese or the Albanians might accuse us of appeasement or weakness. So I said to myself, “To hell with these maniacs. If I can get the United States to assure me that it will not attempt to overthrow the Cuban government, I will remove the missiles.” That is what happened, and now I am reviled by the Chinese and the Albanians.… They say I was afraid to stand up to a paper tiger. It is all such nonsense. What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that though our great nation and the United States were in complete ruins, the national honor of the Soviet Union was intact? “r>
Daniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine Talks at Google was
very interesting talk in which he described why Washington establishment is pro-war as it is (full transcript is availbe from
The Singju Post
). In it he addresses how the regime of secrecy allows to built multi-layer lies, which justify of even make noble any criminal
action by the US government:
But what made that dangerous at any time, then or now? And the answer was that the government secrets that they were holding
onto were secrets about criminal activity, actions that would be extremely embarrassing to a president, because they were illegal
or unconstitutional or simply incredibly reckless, dangerous, horrible priorities, unlikely ever to succeed in any sense or to
end. The public would not have applauded if they understood the actual strategy and the actual prospects.
... ... ...
Every member of Congress has taken that oath. Every member of the Executive Department has taken that same oath. The
president’s wording is a little bit different, protect, preserve and defend or something. But support and defend, everybody else
takes it.
And all of us violated it every day. we heard the president lying to Congress and lying to the public about what he intended,
where the prospects were, what he was going to do in Vietnam, elsewhere. We all heard the president lying the public into a war,
keeping the war going, letting him know the costs would be much less than internal estimates all indicated. And no one broke.
There were no leaks, including me. So was I observing that oath or violating it, when I knew that Congress, which has the
exclusive authority to take us to war, at least that’s the best interpretation, I think, controverted by president’s men, was
entirely delegating that secretly to a president who was determined to enlarge the war. That’s how you get wars that go on 10
years or 11 years, whatever.
The truth is the United States, as I learned from the Pentagon Papers, when I read all of them, had begun the war in 1945 and
’46, supporting a French effort to reconquer a colony which had declared its independence in August and September of 1945. And
actually Ho Chi Minh had been recognized as a head of state, at least of the north, in Paris when they were negotiating in ’45,
’46.
... ... ...
But in terms of American traditions, we thought of ourselves as– we didn’t think– of having run the first war of national
liberation. But it could have been called that, the first war of separation for an empire. And we thought of ourselves as
anti-imperial. And we still think of ourselves that way, as not an empire like the others. That’s false.
That’s very clear from the Pentagon Papers where we’re deciding who should run Vietnam this year or next year or how they
should stay in power, what criminal acts they’re entitled to take, how much we need to support them. And so it’s very obviously
the documents of an empire. In fact, that’s what I said to my wife, when she said, at one point, before they came out, does it
really matter to get this history out? And I said, well, among other things, it’s the first real history of imperial operations
since the Nuremberg documents were discovered, covered after the Second World War. And before that, it probably goes back to
Punic times, to the Syrian empire, to Sumerian empire, and so probably all the same, but we don’t have the documents for it.
And here they are. And yet, even so, I managed to think of it as an aberration. We had somehow gotten ourselves into acting like
an empire. Let me say just very briefly now– I could spend the whole time on this. But I’ll just say, I’ve come recently to see
what we are as a covert empire. And covert refers to plausibly denial covert operations.
Covert operations, I should say, are defined as operations that are not just secret, that you’re not just keeping it safe, but
that you lie about plausibly. And to make it plausible, you provide in advance evidence, false evidence, misleading evidence as
to what’s really going on and who’s running it and why it’s happening and who did it and so forth, a false flag in some cases,
whatever.
But you provide several layers of cover for what’s being done to protect the president from the notion that he is murdering,
overthrowing governments, installing coup governments in democracies and so forth, as so often in the third world then and now,
up until now. Well, you don’t want the US to be associated with that. It’s happening over there.
And if somehow a US hand surfaces, he or she wasn’t working for any agency. And if you find the agency, it wasn’t the CIA. And if
it was the CIA, it wasn’t the president. So you have layer after layer of cover stories with documents. I didn’t know this. It
didn’t come to my attention. This so-and-so did it and so forth. The Vietnam War was run from beginning to end like that. That’s
how we run our empire.
We deny that we are an empire. And what is an empire? A country that determines the regime of other countries, decides who the
police chief was, who shall live and who shall die, what the basic foreign policies are. We do that throughout Central America
and always have, often many other parts of the world as far apart as Indonesia, now the Middle East. In general, we decide: Who
do we want? Is this guy OK? We don’t decide every detail but any more than you decide every detail of a military commander’s
operations.
But generally, they work. If they don’t do what we want, we replace them with somebody else. We deny that we’re an empire. We’re
against empire. When other people do the same sort of thing, they’re empires. They’re acting imperially. First level of denial on
the American part. And then second, how do they get in power? Who has to be killed? What paramilitary forces have to be paid and
go in, as into Nicaragua, for example, and other places? So the efforts are also plausibly denied OK, I could spend time. And I
don’t know if people have it in mind.
... ... ...
And, by the way, “The Day After” is just a tiny, little sliver of what the actual consequences of a nuclear war would look
like. Movies that have come closer to that, there’s one called “Threads” in England that they’ve never allowed to be on BBC, to
be shown. And again, it really just focuses on the long-term degradation and disintegration of everything, like Cormac McCarthy’s
“The Road,” pretty much.
So no nuclear state has ever been willing to tell its own people or to hold others accountable to the risks we are posing over
their head. And a movie like that today would be very worthwhile. But I don’t know what prospect there is of it.
Steve Sailer links to this unsettling essay by former career Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren, who says the “deep state”
— the Washington-Wall-Street-Silicon-Valley Establishment — is a far greater threat to liberty than you think. The partisan
rancor and gridlock in Washington conceals a more fundamental and pervasive agreement.
Excerpts:
These are not isolated instances of a contradiction; they have been so pervasive that they tend to be disregarded as
background noise. During the time in 2011 when political warfare over the debt ceiling was beginning to paralyze the business
of governance in Washington, the United States government somehow summoned the resources to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi’s
regime in Libya, and, when the instability created by that coup spilled over into Mali, provide overt and covert assistance to
French intervention there. At a time when there was heated debate about continuing meat inspections and civilian air traffic
control because of the budget crisis, our government was somehow able to commit $115 millionto keeping a civil war
going in Syria and to pay at least
£100m to the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters to buy influence over and access to that country’s
intelligence. Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of
infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent
$1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to
allow the National Security Agency to store a
yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to 500
quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life.
Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a
hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out,
connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this
phenomenon is not
an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators
mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies
have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial
resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither
omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is
relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are
routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape
the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.
More:
Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible
threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the
political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and
threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best
interests. The executives of the financial giants even have de facto criminal immunity. On March 6, 2013, testifying before
the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Attorney General Eric Holder stated the following: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so
large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you
do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” This,
from the chief law enforcement officer of a justice system that has practically
abolished the constitutional right to trial for poorer defendants
charged with certain crimes. It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its
strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is
lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice — certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee.
[3]
The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in
the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street: Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner and
many others. Not all the traffic involves persons connected with the purely financial operations of the government: In 2013,
General David Petraeus
joined KKR (formerly Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) of 9 West 57th Street, New York, a private equity firm with $62.3 billion in
assets. KKR specializes in management buyouts and leveraged finance. General Petraeus’ expertise in these areas is unclear.
His ability to peddle influence, however, is a known and valued commodity. Unlike Cincinnatus, the military commanders of the
Deep State do not take up the plow once they lay down the sword. Petraeus also obtained a sinecure as a non-resident senior
fellow at theBelfer
Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The Ivy League is, of course, the preferred bleaching tub and
charm school of the American oligarchy.
Lofgren goes on to say that Silicon Valley is a node of the Deep State too, and that despite the protestations of its
chieftains against NSA spying, it’s a vital part of the Deep State’s apparatus. More:
The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the
financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political
dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or
London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to “live
upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face.”
The Cathedral — The self-organizing consensus of Progressives and Progressive ideology represented by the
universities, the media, and the civil service. A term
coined by blogger Mencius Moldbug. The Cathedral has no central administrator, but represents a consensus acting as a
coherent group that condemns other ideologies as evil. Community writers have enumerated the
platform of Progressivism as women’s suffrage, prohibition, abolition, federal income tax, democratic election of
senators, labor laws, desegregation, popularization of drugs, destruction of traditional sexual norms, ethnic studies courses
in colleges, decolonization, and gay marriage. A defining feature of Progressivism is that “you believe that morality has
been essentially solved, and all that’s left is to work out the details.” Reactionaries see Republicans as Progressives,
just lagging 10-20 years behind Democrats in their adoption of Progressive norms.
You don’t have to agree with the Neoreactionaries on what they condemn — women’s suffrage? desegregation? labor laws? really??
— to acknowledge that they’re onto something about the sacred consensus that all Right-Thinking People share. I would love to see
a study comparing the press coverage from 9/11 leading up to the Iraq War with press coverage of the gay marriage issue from
about 2006 till today. Specifically, I’d be curious to know about how thoroughly the media covered the cases against the policies
that the Deep State and the Shallow State decided should prevail. I’m not suggesting a conspiracy here, not at all. I’m only
thinking back to how it seemed so obvious to me in 2002 that we should go to war with Iraq, so perfectly clear that the only
people who opposed it were fools or villains. The same consensus has emerged around same-sex marriage. I know how overwhelmingly
the news media have believed this for some time, such that many American journalists simply cannot conceive that anyone against
same-sex marriage is anything other than a fool or a villain. Again, this isn’t a conspiracy; it’s in the nature of the thing.
Lofgren:
Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist
Irving L. Janis called “groupthink,” the
chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers.
This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making
grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town’s cool kids drop those ideas as if they were
radioactive. As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing
move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be
a small one. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his
not understanding it.”
A more elusive aspect of cultural assimilation is the sheer dead weight of the ordinariness of it all once you have
planted yourself in your office chair for the 10,000th time. Government life is typically not some vignette from
an Allen Drury novel about intrigue under the Capitol dome. Sitting and staring at the clock on the off-white office wall when
it’s 11:00 in the evening and you are vowing never, ever to eat another piece of takeout pizza in your life is not an
experience that summons the higher literary instincts of a would-be memoirist. After a while, a functionary of the state
begins to hear things that, in another context, would be quite remarkable, or at least noteworthy, and yet that simply bounce
off one’s consciousness like pebbles off steel plate: “You mean the
number of terrorist groups we are fighting is classified?” No wonder so few people are whistle-blowers, quite
apart from the vicious retaliation whistle-blowing often provokes: Unless one is blessed with imagination and a fine sense of
irony, growing immune to the curiousness of one’s surroundings is easy. To paraphrase the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, I didn’t
know all that I knew, at least until I had had a couple of years away from the government to reflect upon it.
When all you know is the people who surround you in your professional class bubble and your social circles, you can think the
whole world agrees with you, or should. It’s probably not a coincidence that the American media elite live, work, and
socialize in New York and Washington, the two cities that were attacked on 9/11, and whose elites — political, military,
financial — were so genuinely traumatized by the events.
Anyway, that’s just a small part of it, about how the elite media manufacture consent. Here’s a final quote, one from
the Moyers interview with Lofgren:
BILL MOYERS: If, as you write, the ideology of the Deep State is not democrat or republican, not left or right, what
is it?
MIKE LOFGREN: It’s an ideology. I just don’t think we’ve named it. It’s a kind of corporatism. Now, the
actors in this drama tend to steer clear of social issues. They pretend to be merrily neutral servants of the state, giving
the best advice possible on national security or financial matters. But they hold a very deep ideology of the Washington
consensus at home, which is deregulation, outsourcing, de-industrialization and financialization. And they believe in American
exceptionalism abroad, which is boots on the ground everywhere, it’s our right to meddle everywhere in the world. And the
result of that is perpetual war.
This can’t last. We’d better hope it can’t last. And we’d better hope it unwinds peacefully.
I, for one, remain glad that so many of us Americans are armed. When the Deep State collapses — and it will one day — it’s not
going to be a happy time.
Questions to the room: Is a Gorbachev for the Deep State conceivable? That is, could you foresee a political leader emerging
who could unwind the ideology and apparatus of the Deep State, and not only survive, but succeed? Or is it impossible for the
Deep State to allow such a figure to thrive? Or is the Deep State, like the Soviet system Gorbachev failed to reform, too
entrenched and too far gone to reform itself? If so, what then?
The second important thinker in this area is Professor Michael J. Glennon who wrote the book
“National Security and Double Government.”. The strong point of his views on the subject is that he assumes that there is an
internal struggle between those two forms of government, not just passive submission one to another, but in most cases deep state
prevails. This move led the USA "beyond a mere imperial presidency to a bifurcated system — a structure of double government —
in which even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of U.S. national security policy."
The "deep state" (call by Professor Michael J. Glennon) The Trumanites, exercise their power due to alliance with Wall
Street, almost unlimited funding (with many hidden sources belong US budget), higher efficiency, abuse of secrecy, exaggerated
threats, peer pressure to conform, and corruption of the key decision-makers.
Here is how Amazon reviewer Mal Warwick
summarized the book in his review written on December 22, 2014
Why does Barack Obama's performance on national security issues
in the White House contrast so strongly with his announced intentions as a candidate in 2008? After all, not only has Obama
continued most of the Bush policies he decried when he ran for the presidency, he has doubled down on government surveillance,
drone strikes, and other critical programs.
Michael J. Glennon set out to answer this question in his unsettling new book, National Security and Double Government. And he
clearly dislikes what he found.
The answer, Glennon discovered, is that the US government is divided between the three official branches of the government, on
the one hand — the "Madisonian" institutions incorporated into the Constitution — and the several hundred unelected
officials who do the real work of a constellation of military and intelligence agencies, on the other hand. These officials,
called "Trumanites" in Glennon's parlance for having grown out of the national security infrastructure established under
Harry Truman, make the real decisions in the area of national security. (To wage the Cold War, Truman created the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA, and the National Security Council.) "The United States has, in short,"
Glennon writes, "moved beyond a mere imperial presidency to a bifurcated system — a structure of double government — in which
even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of U.S. national security policy. . .
. The perception of threat, crisis, and emergency has been the seminal phenomenon that has created and nurtures America's double
government." If Al Qaeda hadn't existed, the Trumanite network would have had to create it — and, Glennon seems to imply, might
well have done so.
The Trumanites wield their power with practiced efficiency, using secrecy, exaggerated threats, peer pressure to conform,
and the ability to mask the identity of the key decision-maker as their principal tools.
Michael J. Glennon comes to this task with unexcelled credentials. A professor of international law at Tufts and former legal
counsel for the Senate Armed Services Committee, he came face to face on a daily basis with the "Trumanites" he writes about.
National Security and Double Government is exhaustively researched and documented: notes constitute two-thirds of this deeply
disturbing little book.
The more I learn about how politics and government actually work — and I've learned a fair amount in my 73 years — the more
pessimistic I become about the prospects for democracy in America. In some ways, this book is the most worrisome I've read over
the years, because it implies that there is no reason whatsoever to think that things can ever get better. In other words, to
borrow a phrase from the Borg on Star Trek, "resistance is futile." That's a helluva takeaway, isn't it?
On reflection, what comes most vividly to mind is a comment from the late Chalmers Johnson on a conference call in which I
participated several years ago. Johnson, formerly a consultant to the CIA and a professor at two campuses of the University of
California (Berkeley and later San Diego), was the author of many books, including three that awakened me to many of the issues
Michael Glennon examines: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis. Johnson, who was then nearly 80 and in declining health,
was asked by a student what he would recommend for young Americans who want to combat the menace of the military-industrial
complex. "Move to Vancouver," he said.
Another good summary of the book can be found is review by Bruce Morgan (Shadow
Government )
Elected officials are no longer in charge of our national security—and that is undermining our democracy, says the Fletcher
School's Michael Glennon
"We are clearly on the path to autocracy," says Michael Glennon. "There's no question that if we continue on that
path, [the] Congress, the courts and the presidency will ultimately end up . . . as institutional museum pieces."
Photo: Kelvin Ma
Michael Glennon knew of the book, and had cited it in his classes many times, but he had never gotten around to reading the
thing from cover to cover. Last year he did, jolted page after page with its illuminating message for our time.
The book was The English Constitution, an analysis by 19th-century journalist Walter Bagehot that laid bare the dual
nature of British governance. It suggested that one part of government was for popular consumption, and another more hidden part
was for real, consumed with getting things done in the world. As he read, Glennon, a professor of international law at the
Fletcher School, where he also teaches constitutional law, saw distinct parallels with the current American political scene.
He decided to explore the similarities in a 30-page paper that he sent around to a number of his friends, asking them to
validate or refute his argument. As it happens, Glennon's friends were an extraordinarily well-informed bunch, mostly seasoned
operatives in the CIA, the U.S. State Department and the military. "Look," he told them. "I'm thinking of writing a book. Tell me
if this is wrong." Every single one responded, "What you have here is exactly right."
Expanded from that original brief paper, Glennon's book National Security and Double Government
(Oxford University Press) takes our political system to task, arguing that the people running our government are not our visible
elected officials but high-level—and unaccountable—bureaucrats nestled atop government agencies.
Glennon's informed critique of the American political system comes from a place of deep regard. Glennon says he can remember
driving into Washington, D.C., in the late spring of 1973, at the time of the Senate Watergate hearings, straight from law school
at the University of Minnesota, to take his first job as assistant legislative counsel to the U.S. Senate. Throughout his 20s, he
worked in government, culminating in his position as legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Sen. Frank
Church from 1977 to 1980. Since entering academic life in the early 1980s, Glennon has been a frequent consultant to government
agencies of all stripes, as well as a regular commentator on media outlets such as NPR's All Things Considered, the
Today show and Nightline.
In his new book, an inescapable sadness underlies the narrative. "I feel a great sense of loss," Glennon admits. "I devoted my
life to these [democratic] institutions, and it's not easy to see how to throw the current trends into reverse." Tufts Now
spoke with Glennon recently to learn more of his perspective.
Tufts Now: You've been both an insider and an outsider with regard to government affairs. What led you to write
this book?
Michael Glennon: I was struck by the strange continuity in national security policy between the Bush administration and
the Obama administration. Obama, as a candidate, had been eloquent and forceful in criticizing many aspects of the Bush
administration's national security policies, from drone strikes to Guantanamo to surveillance by the National Security Agency—the
NSA—to covert operations. Yet as president, it turned out that he made very, very few changes in these policies. So I thought it
was useful to explain the reason for that.
Were you surprised by the continuity?
I was surprised
by the extent of it. I knew fundamentally from my own experience that changing national policies is like trying to change the
course of an aircraft carrier. These policies in many ways were set long ago, and the national security bureaucracy tends to
favor the status quo. Still, I thought that a president like Obama would, with the political wind in his sails and with so much
public and congressional support for what he was criticizing, be more successful in fulfilling his promises.
You use the phrase "double government," coined by Walter Bagehot in the 1860s. What did he mean by that?
Walter Bagehot was one of the founders of the Economist magazine. He developed the theory of "double government,"
which in a nutshell is this. He said Britain had developed two sets of institutions. First came "dignified" institutions, the
monarchy and the House of Lords, which were for show and which the public believed ran the government. But in fact, he suggested,
this was an illusion.
These dignified institutions generate legitimacy, but it was a second set of institutions, which he called Britain's
"efficient" institutions, that actually ran the government behind the scenes. These institutions were the House of Commons, the
Cabinet and the prime minister. This split allowed Britain to move quietly from a monarchy to what Bagehot called a "concealed
republic."
The thesis of my book is that the United States has also drifted into a form of double government, and that we have our own
set of "dignified" institutions—Congress, the presidency and the courts. But when it comes to national security policy, these
entities have become largely for show. National security policy is now formulated primarily by a second group of officials,
namely the several hundred individuals who manage the agencies of the military, intelligence and law enforcement bureaucracy
responsible for protecting the nation's security.
What are some components of this arrangement?
The NSA, the FBI, the Pentagon and elements of the State Department, certainly; generally speaking, law enforcement,
intelligence and the military entities of the government. It's a diverse group, an amorphous group, with no leader and no formal
structure, that has come to dominate the formation of American national security policy to the point that Congress, the
presidency and the courts all defer to it.
You call this group the "Trumanite network" in your book. What's the link to Harry Truman?
It was in Truman's administration that the National Security Act of 1947 was enacted. This established the CIA and the
National Security Council and centralized the command of the U.S. military. It was during the Truman administration as well that
the National Security Agency [NSA] was set up, in 1952, although that was a secret and didn't come to light for many years
thereafter.
In contrast to the Trumanites you set the "Madisonians." How would you describe them?
The Madisonian institutions are the three constitutionally established branches of the federal government: Congress, the
judiciary and the president. They are perceived by the public as the entities responsible for the formulation of national
security policy, but that belief is largely mistaken.
The idea is driven by regular exceptions. You can always point to specific instances in which, say, the president personally
ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden or Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution. But these are exceptions. The norm is that
as a general matter, these three branches defer to the Trumanite network, and that's truer all the time.
So the trend is toward increased power on the Trumanite side of the ledger.
Correct.
If that's true, why has there not been a greater outcry from the public, the media—all the observers we have?
I think the principal reason is that even sophisticated students of government operate under a very serious misunderstanding.
They believe that the political system is self-correcting. They believe the framers set up a system of government setting power
against power, and ambition against ambition, and that an equilibrium would be reached, and that any abuse of power would be
checked, and arbitrary power would be prevented.
That is correct as far as it goes, but the reality is that's only half the picture. The other half is that Madison and his
colleagues believed that for equilibrium to occur, we would have an informed and engaged citizenry. Lacking that, the entire
system corrupts, because individuals are elected to office who do not resist encroachments on the power of their branches of
government, and the whole equilibrium breaks down.
What role, if any, have the media played?
The media have pretty much been enablers. Although there are a handful of investigative journalists who have done a heroic job
of uncovering many of the abuses, they are the exception, for a number of reasons. Number one, the media are a business and have
a bottom line. It takes a huge amount of money to fund an investigative journalist who goes about finding sources over a period
of years. Very few newspapers or television concerns have those sorts of deep pockets.
Second, access for the press is everything. There is huge incentive to pull punches, and you don't get interviews with
top-ranking officials at the NSA or CIA if you're going to offer hard-hitting questions. Look, for example, at the infamous
60 Minutes puff piece on the NSA, a really tragic example of how an otherwise respectable institution can sell its soul and
act like an annex of the NSA in order to get some people it wants on the TV screen.
What is the role of terror in this environment?
The whole transfer of power from the Madisonian institutions to the Trumanite network has been fueled by a sense of emergency
deriving from crisis, deriving from fear. It's fear of terrorism more than anything else that causes the American people to
increasingly be willing to dispense with constitutional safeguards to ensure their safety.
Madison believed that government has two great objects. One object of a constitution is to enable the government to protect
the people, specifically from external attacks. The other great object of a constitution is to protect the people from the
government. The better able the government is to protect the people from external threats, the greater the threat posed by the
government to the people.
You've been involved with the U.S. government for 40 years. How has your view of government changed?
Double government was certainly a factor in the 1970s, but it was challenged for the first time thanks to the activism
stemming from the civil rights movement, Vietnam and Watergate. As a result, there were individuals in Congress—Democrats and
Republicans like William Fulbright, Frank Church, Jacob Javits, Charles Mathias and many others—who were willing to stand up and
insist upon adherence to constitutionally ordained principles. That led to a wave of activism and to the enactment of a number of
pieces of reform legislation.
But there is no final victory in Washington. Those reforms have gradually been eaten away and turned aside. I think today we
are in many ways right back where we were in the early 1970s. NSA surveillance is an example of that. The Church Committee
uncovered something called Operation Shamrock, in which the NSA had assembled a watch list of antiwar and civil rights activists
based upon domestic surveillance. Church warned at the time that NSA capabilities were so awesome that if they were ever turned
inward on the American people, this nation would cross an abyss from which there is no return. The question is whether we have
recently crossed that abyss.
To what degree are we still a functioning democracy? I'm sure you know that President Jimmy Carter told a German reporter
last year that he thought we no longer qualified as a democracy because of our domestic surveillance.
We are clearly on the path to autocracy, and you can argue about how far we are down that path. But there's no question that
if we continue on that path, America's constitutionally established institutions—Congress, the courts and the presidency—will
ultimately end up like Britain's House of Lords and monarchy, namely as institutional museum pieces.
His answer: national security policy is determined largely by “the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence,
diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely
immune from constitutional and electoral restraints.” The president, congress and the courts play largely a symbolic role in
national security policy, Glennon claims.
You can read a Harvard National Security Journal article that outlines Glennon’s argument at this link:
http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf. The paper is not an especially easy read, but I
found it to be well researched and – for me – persuasive.
His book adds more analysis to the argument, using (from Graham Allison’s
Essence of Decision) the rational actor model, the government politics model, and the organizational behavior model. Glennon
extends that framework by discussing culture, networks, and the myth of alternative competing hypotheses. The book is
richer, in my opinion. But the core of Glennon’s position is in the paper.
In National Security and Double Government, Michael Glennon examines the continuity in U.S. national security
policy from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. Glennon explains the lack of change by pointing to the
enervation of America’s “Madisonian institutions,” namely, the Congress, the presidency, and the courts. In Glennon’s view,
these institutions have been supplanted by a “Trumanite network” of bureaucrats who make up the permanent national security
state. National security policymaking has been removed from public view and largely insulated from law and politics. Glennon
warns that leaving security policy in the hands of the Trumanite network threatens Americans’ liberties and the republican
form of government.
Some blurb reviews:
“If constitutional government is to endure in the United States, Americans must confront the fundamental challenges
presented by this chilling analysis of the national security state.” Bruce Ackerman
“Glennon shows how the underlying national security bureaucracy in Washington – what might be called the deep state –
ensures that presidents and their successors act on the world stage like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” John J.
Mearsheimer
“National Security and Double Government is brilliant, deep, sad, and vastly learned across multiple fields–a work
of Weberian power and stature. It deserves to be read and discussed. The book raises philosophical questions in the public
sphere in a way not seen at least since Fukuyama’s end of history.” David A. Westbrook
“In our faux democracy, those we elect to govern serve largely ornamental purposes, while those who actually wield
power, especially in the realm of national security, do so chiefly with an eye toward preserving their status and
prerogatives. Read this incisive and richly documented book, and you’ll understand why.”Andrew J. Bacevich
“…Michael Glennon provides a compelling argument that America’s national security policy is growing outside the bounds of
existing government institutions. This is at once a constitutional challenge, but is also a case study in how national
security can change government institutions, create new ones, and, in effect, stand-up a parallel state….” Vali Nasr
“Instead of being responsive to citizens or subject to effective checks and balances,
U.S. national security policy is in fact conducted by a shadow government of bureaucrats and a supporting network of think
tanks, media insiders, and ambitious policy wonks. Presidents may come and go, but the permanent national security
establishment inevitably defeats their efforts to chart a new course….”Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer
I’ve spoken to three people I consider to be members of the “shadow national security state.” One person said
Glennon’s argument is nothing new. The second told me he’s got it exactly right. The third said it’s even worse.
If Michael Glennon conceded defeat, but still has some hope, here we enter perfect Dante hell picture along the lines "Leave
all hopes those who dare to enter"
In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and
William Arkin have called
two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top
secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to
only a carefully vetted cadre – and its entirety…visible only to God.1
And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as
America’s “deep state.”2 Here for example is the Republican analyst Mike Lofgren:
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more
indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The
former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which
is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates
according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.3
At the end of 2013 a New York Times Op-Ed noted this trend, and even offered a definition of the term that will work for the
purposes of this essay:
DEEP STATE n. A hard-to-perceive level of government or super-control that exists regardless of elections and that
may thwart popular movements or radical change. Some have said that Egypt is being manipulated by its deep state.4
The political activities of the deep state are the chief source and milieu of what I have elsewhere called “deep politics:”
“all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged.”5
Others, like Tom Hayden, call the deep state a “state within the state,” and suggest it may be responsible for the failure of
the Obama administration to follow the policy guidelines of the president’s speeches:
We have seen evidence of a "state within the state" before, going back as far as the CIA's operations against Cuba. In
Obama's time, the president correctly named the 2009 coup in Honduras a "coup", and then seemed powerless to prevent it.6
This development of a two-level or dual state has been paralleled by two other dualities: the increasing resolution of
American society into two classes – the “one percent” and the “ninety-nine percent” – and the bifurcation of the U.S. economy
into two aspects: the domestic, still subject to some governmental regulation and taxation, and the international, relatively
free from governmental controls.7 All three developments have affected and intensified each other – particularly since
the Reagan Revolution of 1980, which saw American inequality of wealth cease to diminish and begin to increase.8 Thus
for example we shall see how Wall Street – the incarnation of the “one percent” – played a significant role in increasing the
deep state after World War Two, and how three decades later the deep state played a significant role in realigning America for
the Reagan Revolution.
In earlier books I have given versions of this America-centered account of America’s shift into empire and a deep state. But
another factor to be mentioned is the shift of global history towards an increasingly global society dominated by a few emergent
superpowers. This trend was accelerated after the Industrial Revolution by new technologies of transport, from the railroad in
the 19th century to the jet plane and space travel in the 20th.9
In the fallout from this rearrangement we must include two world wars, as a result of which Britain ceased to act as the
dominant superpower it had been since Napoleon. Not surprisingly, the Soviet Union and the United States subsequently competed in
a Cold War to fill the gap. It was not however predetermined that the Cold War would be as thuggish and covertly violent as
for decades it continued to be. For that we should look to more contingent causes on both sides of the Iron Curtain – starting
with the character of Stalin and his party but also including the partly responsive development of the American deep state.
The Deep State, The Shadow Government and the Wall Street Overworld
The “deep state” was defined by the UK newsletter On Religion as “the embedded anti-democratic power structures within a
government, something very few democracies can claim to be free from.”10
The term originated in Turkey in 1996, to refer to U.S.-backed elements, primarily in the intelligence services and military, who
had repeatedly used violence to interfere with and realign Turkey’s democratic political process. Sometimes the definition is
restricted to elements within the government (or “a state-within-the state”), but more often in Turkey the term is expanded, for
historical reasons, to include “members of the Turkish underworld.”11 In this essay I shall use “deep state” in the
larger sense, to include both the second level of secret government inside Washington and those outsiders powerful enough, in
either the underworld or overworld, to give it direction. In short I shall equate the term “deep state” with what in 1993 I
termed a “deep political system:” “ one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as
inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society.”12
Like myself, Lofgren suggests an ambiguous symbiosis between two aspects of the American deep state:
1) the Beltway agencies of the shadow government, like the CIA and NSA, which have been instituted by the public
state and now overshadow it, and
2) the much older power of Wall Street, referring to the powerful banks and law firms located there.
In his words,
It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other
reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of
avarice - certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee.13
I shall argue that in the 1950s Wall Street was a dominating complex. It included not just banks and oil firms but also the
oil majors whose cartel arrangements were successfully defended against the U.S. Government by the Wall Street law firm Sullivan
and Cromwell, home to the Dulles brothers. This larger complex is what I mean by the Wall Street overworld.
The Long History of the Wall Street Overworld
Lofgren’s inclusion of Wall Street is in keeping with Franklin Roosevelt’s observation in 1933 to his friend Col. E.M. House
that “The real truth … is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since
the days of Andrew Jackson.”14
FDR’s insight is well illustrated by the efficiency with which a group of Wall Street bankers (including Nelson Rockefeller’s
grandfather Nelson Aldrich and Paul Warburg) were able in a highly secret meeting in 1910 to establish the Federal Reserve System
– a system which in effect reserved oversight of the nation’s currency supply and of all America’s banks in the not impartial
hands of its largest.15 The political clout of the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve Board (where the federal
Treasury is represented but does not dominate) was clearly demonstrated in 2008, when Fed leadership secured instant support from
the successive administrations of a Texan Republican president, followed by a Midwest Democratic one, for public money to rescue
the reckless management of Wall Street banks: banks Too Big To Fail, and of course far Too Big To Jail, but not Too Big To Bail.16
Wall Street and the Launching of the CIA
Top-level Treasury officials, CIA officers, and Wall Street bankers and lawyers think alike because of the “revolving door” by
which they pass easily from private to public service and back. In 1946 General Vandenberg, as Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI), recruited Allen Dulles, then a Republican lawyer at Sullivan and Cromwell in New York, "to draft proposals for the shape
and organization of what was to become the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947." Dulles promptly formed an advisory group of six
men, all but one of whom were Wall Street investment bankers or lawyers.17 Dulles and two of the six (William H.
Jackson and Frank Wisner) later joined the agency, where Dulles proceeded to orchestrate policies, such as the overthrow of the
Arbenz regime in Guatemala, that he had previously discussed in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations.18
There seems to be little difference in Allen Dulles’s influence whether he was a Wall Street lawyer or a CIA director.
Although he did not formally join the CIA until November 1950, he was in Berlin before the start of the 1948 Berlin Blockade,
“supervising the unleashing of anti-Soviet propaganda across Europe.”19 In the early summer of 1948 he set up the
American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE), support of what became by the early 1950s “the largest CIA operation in Western
Europe.”20
The Deep State and Funds for CIA Covert Operations
Wall Street was also the inspiration for what eventually became the CIA’s first covert operation: the use of “over $10 million
in captured Axis funds to influence the [Italian] election [of 1948].”21
(The fundraising had begun at the wealthy Brook Club in New York; but Allen Dulles, still a Wall Street lawyer, persuaded
Washington, which at first had preferred a private funding campaign, to authorize the operation through the National Security
Council and the CIA.)22
Dulles’s friend Frank Wisner then left Wall Street to oversee an enlarged covert operations program through the newly created
Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC). Dulles, still a lawyer, campaigned successfully to reconstruct Western Europe through what
became known as the Marshall Plan.23
Together with George Kennan and James Forrestal, Dulles also “helped devise a secret codicil [to the Marshall Plan] that gave the
CIA the capability to conduct political warfare. It let the agency skim millions of dollars from the plan.”24
This created one of the earlier occasions when the CIA, directly or indirectly, recruited local assets involved in drug
trafficking. AFL member Irving Brown, the assistant of AFL official Jay Lovestone (a CIA asset), was implicated in drug smuggling
activities in Europe, at the same time that he used funds diverted from the Marshall Plan to establish
a "compatible left" labor union in Marseilles with Pierre Ferri-Pisani. On behalf of Brown and the CIA, Ferri-Pisani (a
drug smuggler connected with Marseilles crime lord Antoine Guerini), hired goons to shellack striking Communist dock workers.25
An analogous funding source for the CIA developed in the Far East: the so-called
"M-Fund," a secret fund of money of enormous size that has existed in Japan [in 1991] for more than forty years. The Fund
was established by the United States in the immediate postwar era for essentially the same reasons that later gave rise to the
Marshall Plan of assistance by the U.S. to Western Europe, including the Federal Republic of Germany….. The M-Fund was used
not only for the building of a democratic political system in Japan but, in addition, for all of the purposes for which
Marshall Plan funds were used in Europe.26
For at least two decades the CIA lavishly subsidized right-wing parties in countries including Japan and Indonesia, possibly
still using captured Axis funds.27 (One frequently encounters the claim that the source of the M-fund was gold looted
by Japan during World War Two (“Yamashita’s gold”).28
As a general rule the CIA, rather than assimilating these funds into its own budget, appears to have left them off the books
in the hands of cooperative allied powers – ranging from other U.S. agencies like the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA.
set up in 1948 to administer the Marshall Plan) to oil companies to powerful drug kingpins.29
The CIA never abandoned its dependency on funds from outside its official budget to conduct its clandestine operations. In
Southeast Asia, in particular, its proprietary firm Sea Supply Inc., supplied an infrastructure for a drug traffic supporting a
CIA-led paramilitary force, PARU.30
The CIA appears also to have acted in coordination with slush funds from various U.S. government contracts, ranging from the
Howard Hughes organization to (as we shall see) the foreign arms sales of U.S. defense corporations like Lockheed and Northrop.31
Johnson reversed that memorandum within a few days of Kennedy's assassination. Johnson
was just another front man for the MIC.
radio man 15 hours ago
What a load. Visited the 6th floor and the grassy knoll back in the eighties and all
doubts were confirmed. Like Trump, JFK was clueless about the real enemy. The true enemy is
a central banking cartel that knew a Military Industrial Complex could and would serve as a
Fountain of Youth.
Taxpayers are semi-living proof that bloodletting is still in vogue and the Oswald hoax
was simply the cost of doing business.
eatapeach 14 hours ago (Edited)
Pretty clear, just from the cui bono, that it was a coup: LBJ got the White House, the
MIC got more Vietnam, and Israel's American arm AIPAC did not have to register as a foreign
agent.
Baron Samedi 15 hours ago
(((They))) had/have long since planned a world-spanning post-modern, neo-feudal (ref.
Quigley T&H) bankster aristocracy with a pseudo-Marxist face ... and were/are not about
to let anyone interfere with that. The most wonderfully compact expression of this is to be
found in a speech by Ned Beatty in the 1976 (!) film NETWORK:
(Seeing Old Sam playing chicken simultaneously (!) with two nuclear-armed peers and
quite apparently indifferent to the fate of 7-8 billion peasants (anyone with assets of
less than 1 B U$D) should be informative enough. But his continued frenetic drive for
apparent hegemony also suggests Sam believes he is alone in having an ace up his sleeve
(e.g. ZPE/antigrav/DEW++) to achieve it.)
bobdog54 15 hours ago
What happened to that kind of sensible democrat?
Corn Pops brother, Pop Corn 14 hours ago
He made a deal with the devil, known as the mob in Chicago, then burned the CIA by
backing out of the Cuban invasion.
The rest is history, as they say
radio man 14 hours ago
Then, Bobby goes after the mob. Brilliant!
consistentliving PREMIUM 10 hours ago
becuz Mob, CIA basically the same thing, different day
Able Ape 4 hours ago
JFK did NOT give the generals the nuclear war they wanted [Cuban Missile Crisis]; for
that, he was a great man...
Don Cherry 3 hours ago (Edited)
And for that he was assassinated
Ms No PREMIUM 1 hour ago (Edited)
He was assassinated for saying he would break the CIA I to a thousand pieces and
demanding Inspections of Israel's Dimona. His father also made comments proving they were
wise to the Zio mafia.
Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a "mentally unstable" Donald Trump in the 2016 US
presidential election during a closed session of Russia's national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked
Kremlin documents.
...
Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined
them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.
Yaawwwnn ...
We know, without reading it, that the story is fake because its main author is Luke Harding. Harding also authored the story which
claimed that Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manaford met Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. That story was
proven to be false but the Guardian , to its shame, still has it
up on its website .
The Guardian story claims that the 'leaked' nonsense paper was discussed in high level Kremlin meeting in January 2016.
It was then decided, it alleges, to support Trump. But in January 2016 there was no one, not even Donald Trump himself, who thought
that he would win the Republican primary or even the presidency. But the Kremlin is supposed to have discussed him at the highest
level well before anyone thought he could win?
Various people make interesting remarks about the new Guardian fakery:
I am seriously coming to the conclusion that Luke Harding is a Russian operative who has been put in place as part of a long
term dastardly plan to make British journalism appear ridiculous.
The next Luke Harding MI6 hoax.
Passing off forged Kremlin minutes saying things like "It is acutely necessary to use all possible force to facilitate his [Trump's]
election to the post of US president."
Hilarious
theguardian.com/world/2021/jul"¦
The part of the media that feigns anger at misinformation is uncritically promoting a story today by Luke Harding that Russia
was blackmailing Trump -- the same Harding who has published many false stories, championed the Steele Dossier and claimed Trump
was long a Russian agent.
...
Now suddenly, Harding claims he obtained leaked, highly sensitive Kremlin documents that just so happen to prove all the lies
he's been peddling for years, that not even Mueller's huge team found. Because it advances liberals' interests, journalists are
uncritically spreading it.
...
I will once use this shabby behavior to against highlight 2 points:
1) The contempt and loss of trust people harbor for the corporate media is completely justified and well-earned.
2) These outlets are by far the most prolific and destructive disseminators of disinformation.
Even people who are typically inclined to promote all kinds of anti-Russian nonsense are cautious on this item.
This Guardian story is likely to make big waves. I would remain somewhat cautious for now, however. For a "leak" of this magnitude,
we need at least some details on the chain of custody. Also note the Guardian's own hedging ("papers appear to show") theguardian.com/world/2021/jul"¦
Also, just putting this out there, if the US had this and thought it was real, how likely is it that it would have survived
the waterfall of leaks of the past few years? And yet, here we are, with this as exclusive by the UK's Guardian, and conspicuously
not, say, WaPo or NYT.
Christopher Steele, the 'former' British intelligence officer who peddle the fake dossier about alleged Russian Trump kompromat
on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, worked and still works for Orbis Intelligence, a British private outlet run by 'former'
British spies.
They embarass us all with this sort of stupidity. And being British, of course, they double down on it.
" REVEALED: Iran plotted to kidnap Iranian-American journalist from Brooklyn, transport her by speedboat to Venezuela and
then fly her to the Islamic republic because she criticized regime, FBI say"
You just cannot get much more ludicrous than that.
@ 1 bemildred.... i knew it was a lie when i heard it on the cbc radio yesterday... if the cbc is running with it - it is an outright
made up lie... accept everything on the surface and never question anything!!! be a good citizen, lol...
The articles from The Guardian and all don't prove anything about Russia's plans. The cite the January 26 meeting of the Security
Council as Proof of Putin's plans. If I were in Putin's place, I would also have been happy with Trump's election and its likely
socioeconomic impact on the US society.
Harding strikes me as someone who's completely into the business of selling stories. He senses where the money is , looks at his
sales numbers and concludes he's doing great because that is how he measures things. No concept of 'truth' other than financial
success in the market of ideas. I suspect he makes a lot of money.
damn, i wish i had it in me to be a cult leader...i'd make a beeline to the guardian office and have an army of kool-aid drinking
simps at my disposal. when they aren't harrassing and firing women writers for calling out "female identifying" sex offenders
in dresses or stirring up imaginary "anti-semitism" they're peddling this delusional nonsense and LARPing as MI6 spooks. truly
in their own little world. i'll guess some LSD in the water cooler and a decent powerpoint presentation is all it would take to
be the limey jim jones.
The chunks of the supposed document that the Guardian included with its article really give it away. The text - supposedly from
an internal Kremlin communication - reads as no more or less than a chunk of English passed through Google Translate. Idiomatically,
it is chock full of awkwardness and simple ridiculous phrasings. There are even grammatical errors! "..во Ð²Ñ€ÐµÐ¼Ñ Ð¿Ñ€ÐµÐ±Ñ‹Ð²Ð°Ð½Ð¸Ñ
его..." is simply incorrect. In Russian, the last two words are reversed in order.
It recalls the recent Putin's Palace story, with the "комната грÑзи".
It's just shameful how little pride the propagandists take in their work. I understand that they hold their audience in only
the lowest of regard (not without cause, to be fair), but it's not like there is any shortage of Russian-speakers in the west
they could go to for proofreading, if not copy writing.
"Of course, this is such a continuation of absolutely low-quality publications. Either the newspaper is trying to somehow increase
its popularity, or the newspaper continues such a frenzied Russophobic line. Of course, all this does not and cannot correspond
to the truth. This, in fact, is not true ... This is a continuation of the exercises on total demonization of Russia and Putin,
which The Guardian sometimes likes to do, or is it a desperate attempt to attract some new readers by publishing such tales,
"Peskov said.
"REVEALED: Iran plotted to kidnap Iranian-American journalist from Brooklyn, transport her by speedboat to Venezuela and then
fly her to the Islamic republic because she criticized regime, FBI say", Bemildred | Jul 15 2021 15:31 utc | 1
I TOLD you all that the FBI needed new script writers. Either that or they have so little imagination that they
have to use up all the scripts from a couple of years back, as they cannot afford new ones.
Doesn't matter - the MSNBC watchers will never accept this. I still try to punch through the armor of confirmation bias now and
then. My last jab was: "I think Russiagate is every bit as much evidence-free bullshit as Quanon!". No effect whatsoever. Willing
to agree with half of what I said - just like Fox watchers.
Unfortunately, I don't think my fellow citizens here in the heart of Pindostan will pay attention until things get bad enough
that they know actual hunger - and then they will serve the elites by fighting each other.
Sorry for the pessimism, the one positive thing I do think I can do is tend my vegetable garden!
"во Ð²Ñ€ÐµÐ¼Ñ Ð¿Ñ€ÐµÐ±Ñ‹Ð²Ð°Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÐµÐ³Ð¾", maybe awkward but semikosher, many examples can be found Googling it ---like during
stay of his vs. during his stay (e.g. kamchatka.mid.ru can be found to say: "ÑвÑÐ·Ð°Ð½Ð½Ñ‹Ñ Ñ Ð´ÐµÐ¹ÑтвиÑми и поÑтупками
пригÐ"ашаемого во Ð²Ñ€ÐµÐ¼Ñ Ð¿Ñ€ÐµÐ±Ñ‹Ð²Ð°Ð½Ð¸Ñ ÐµÐ³Ð¾ в РФ, в том чиÑÐ"е, в ÑÐ"учае депортации").
Jeez, it just gets worse-as soon as I saw the name Luke harding, I knew it was a pile of trash; really, who in the hell reads
this without a sense to vomit.
Well, there there is Orbis: "great reporting."
MI6 and prob cia has this clown on the payroll; I tried to watch the last 5 minutes of the video but could not get past the
first minute; the guy is absolutely repulsive and they continue to double down on this garbage.
I think you really nailed it; we see it every day, with this latest pail of s___, that these purveyors absolutely have no shame
or embarrassment, but believe their audience, the sheeple, are complete idiots or stupid. The question is who is stupid as this
level of stupidity cannot be fixed or underestimated.
I remember the scene in the movie "The Big Short" where Steve Carell
was saying, "they knew all along!".
Goldman Sachs, et al, had over-leveraged the housing mortgages and "they knew all along"
if and when it all crumbled the government would cover Wall Street's bad bets with taxpayer debt.
They knew all along it was bs but they did it anyway.
The MSM is a different arena but has the same arrogant attitude towards average joe citizen.
The MSM knows it is selling bs but they don't care.
What I see is they are counting on the "Reiteration Effect" (look it up, it is a real thing).
"Russia bad", "Russia bad", "Russia bad", "Russia bad", "Russia bad", "Russia bad".
There have been a steady stream of "Russia bad" stories and "Russia helped Trump" stories, and over time
the fact that these stories are one by one debunked does not matter. The "Reiteration Effect" is what matters.
"Say something a million times and it becomes true" is not a mere cynical phrase, it actually works - the "Reiteration Effect".
Keep putting out these "Russia bad" stories and "Russia helped Trump" stories and over time people will accept the basic message
as true.
The MSM has known all along they were selling bs, but they don't care.
They definitely didn't know 2008 would happen. On the contrary: they thought they had discovered the elixir of immortality
for capitalism.
The USA was caught completely off-guard in September 2008. You have to search with a magnifying glass to find the ten people
who predicted the crisis would happen in its nature and more or less its timing - but even then, most of them were Marxists, i.e.
outside the commanding heights of the USG.
I like the idea of the makers of this thing deciding that it's a shoddy job which only Harding will take. Also Harding gets all
the attention but let's not forget the honourable mentions in this story: Julian Borger and Dan Sabbagh.
I saved this from somewhere (?) years ago. Doesn't matter, you can read Paulson's coup document for yourself.
The WSJ link still works but you hit a pay wall. You can put the following url at
http://web.archive.org/
and read the original WSJ publication and Paulson's coup document dated Sept 20, 2008 at the WSJ.
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion,
and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
Did you catch that? Paulson went further. Not just the courts are cut out but "any adminstrative agency" as well.
Paulson also was giving to Himself the authority to APPROPRIATE any funds He wished.
"Any funds expended for actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses, shall be deemed
appropriated at the time of such expenditure."
HE could pass ANY legislation He wanted to:
"(5) issuing such regulations and other guidance as may be necessary or appropriate to define terms or carry out the authorities
of this Act."
The word "term" has a duel meaning. It also refers to TIME, as in length of a term.
Give powers to anyone and hire anyone He wished to:
"(1) appointing such employees as may be required to carry out the authorities in this Act and defining their duties;"
What miscellaneous authorities did G-d Paulson give Himself? Answer: Authority over the police and the military.
"In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration means for""
(1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and
"providing stability OR". That OR makes for confusion (intentional confusion). Stability is a word used often in the context
of economics but it is also used in the context of police action. Get it? He wants to create his own SS. See the very next
word: "protecting", as in "We Serve and Protect".
(2) protecting the taxpayer."
The last one is my favorite. Who is a *taxpayer*? Hmmm, is not everyone, even candy purchasing kids liable to pay tax? Corporations
are also taxpayers...
G-d Paulson covered all his bases.
Even the one about being G-d Forever:
"Sec. 9. Termination of Authority.
The authorities under this Act, with the exception of authorities granted in sections 2(b)(5), 5 and 7, shall terminate
two years from the date of enactment of this Act."
Paulson wants you to believe this terminates in two years. However, 2(b)(5) does NOT terminate and that one says he can
just place the crown back on His own head:
"(5) issuing such regulations and other guidance as may be necessary or appropriate to define terms or carry out the authorities
of this Act."
Cheers
A coup! A massive scandal that has been totally missed.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only
for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus
becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the
lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."-- Joseph Goebbels (Luke Harding's Father?)
I'm not normally a follower of this topic even though one of our sleazers, Downer, was involved but needing something to smile
at while in our CV lockdown I watched the link.
What an understatement! It's a hilarious 28m:51s train wreck interview with a complete dick. Thanks b for sharing it.
@Vk, I'm sorry to contradict you but if you pick up a copy of the Financial Times in 2008 before the crash, everyone was predicting
it. I checked recently, and sure enough, it was all over the paper.
By 2007, the financial elite already knew something would happen - but not a structural crisis. In fact, they predicted nothing:
the chain of bankruptcies started at the end of 2006; September 2008 was just the date it "leaked" to the "real economy".
Not every crisis is bad for capitalism. Cyclical crisis are natural and beneficial to capitalism. The crisis of 2008 was not
a cyclical crisis, but a structural one. They probably thought it was either a cyclical crisis (a la Dotcom crisis of 2000) or,
if something more serious, something the free market would easily be able to "self-regulate" out of.
Pennsylvania 's
top election official has decertified the voting system of rural Fulton County for future elections, saying
that an election assessment by a third party had violated the Keystone State's election code,
according to a release on Wednesday.
Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf,
informed the Fulton County Board of Elections that she "did not arrive at this decision
lightly."
Wake Technology Services Inc. (Wake TSI), a software company based in West Chester,
Pennsylvania, had carried out an election assessment that involved its workers visiting Fulton
County in December 2020 and in early February.
The company in May released a report that concluded the election was "well-run" and did not
indicate any signs of fraud in Fulton County. However,
five "issues of note" were uncovered , three of which are related to Dominion Voting Systems ,
whose electronic voting system was used in the county for the 2020 election.
"While these may seem minor, the impact on an election can be huge," Wake TSI said of the
five issues. At the time, Dominion disputed the report's findings.
The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement on Wednesday that
Wake TSI's access to the Fulton County's voting system "undermined the chain of custody
requirements and strict access limitations necessary to prevent both intentional and
inadvertent tampering with electronic voting systems."
It added that the "unauthorized access" prevents the vendor -- Dominion -- from "affirming
that the system continues to meet state and federal certification standards."
Fulton county officials had allowed Wake TSI to "access certain key components of its
certified system, including the county's election database, results files, and Windows systems
logs," and to "use a system imaging tool to take complete hard drive images of these computers
and other digital equipment," the department noted.
"These actions were taken in a manner that was not transparent," Degraffenreid said in her
letter to Fulton County officials on Tuesday. She said the access given to Wake TSI has
caused Fulton County's voting system to be "compromised," and that neither the county, state
officials, nor Dominion could now "verify that the impacted components of Fulton County's
leased voting system are safe to use in future elections."
"I have no other choice but to decertify the use of Fulton County's leased Dominion
Democracy Suite 5.5A voting system last used in the November 2020 election," Degraffenreid
wrote.
The Fulton County Board of Elections and Wake TSI did not immediately respond to requests
for comment.
The Pennsylvania Department of State previously said that a risk-limiting audit of the 2020
election has confirmed the state's election results.
The
Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported that Fulton County needed to pay $25,000 to lease new
equipment for its municipal elections in May, because Dominion refused to let the county use
the voting machines that Wake TSI had accessed. According to the outlet, Dominion told the
county that it violated its contract in letting a unaccredited and non-certified company
inspect the machines.
Wake TSI's assessment in Fulton County was "set" by Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano, a
Republican, according to a Dec. 31, 2020 document
signed by the company that was obtained and published by the Arizona Mirror and The Washington
Post. Wake TSI said in its report that Mastriano and Pennsylvania Sen. Judy Ward, also a
Republican, "were aware of our efforts."
The document also said that Wake TSI was "contracted to Defending the Republic," a nonprofit
founded by lawyer Sidney Powell, who has alleged that widespread fraud occurred in the 2020
election.
Mastriano earlier this month
issued letters to York, Tioga, and Philadelphia counties requesting that they voluntarily
submit information and materials by July 31, to enable what he calls a "forensic investigation"
of the 2020 and 2021 elections. He told The Epoch Times that he seeks for an investigation that
would be "a big deep dive, like we saw in Arizona, but even deeper."
Wake TSI was also involved in the election audit still underway in Arizona's Maricopa County
up until
its contract expired in May. The audit in Maricopa County was ordered by the Arizona state
Senate's Republican majority. Dominion machines in Maricopa County will also be
replaced .
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, said the machines were not tampered with
during the audit and questioned the Board of Supervisors' decision to get new machines.
"If their experts can't prove the machines have not been tampered with, then how does the
[Secretary of State's office] or County Elections certify the machines before every audit to
make sure the machines haven't been tampered with?" she asked in June.
Henry Kissinger has said, not unreasonably, that we are in "the foothills" of a cold war
with China. And Vladimir Putin, who nurses an unassuageable grudge about the way the Cold
War ended, seems uninterested in Russia reconciling itself to a role as a normal nation
without gratuitous resorts to mendacity. It is, therefore, well to notice how, day by day,
in all of the globe's time zones, civilized nations are, in word and deed, taking small but
cumulatively consequential measures that serve deterrence.
If arrogance were a deadly disease, George Will would be dead.
George Will has been an
ass clown since I first had the displeasure of watching him in the 1970s. Age has not brought
an ounce of wisdom. Nevertheless, this total lack of self reflection and ability to project
American sins on others is unfortunately not unique to our man George. It seems a habit
throughout the entire US political spectrum. The ability to view, for example, the invasion
of Iraq as perfectly normal behavior, while viewing any resistance to US/Israeli dominance as
beyond the pale is the character of the decaying American superpower. George Will is but one
manifestation of it. It was once infuriating. But now it's simply like listening to the
ravings of a schizophrenic. More pathetic than anything else.
What do you expect from George Swill? He is a pathetic, disoriented refugee from his home in
Victorian England, when barbarism never set for a single instant on the British Empire.
There's a way to get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from the
mainstream news media. Just look at their propaganda and ask yourself, "Why do they want me
to believe this particular lie?" If you can figure that you, you will have the truth.
Well, you know, the white man's burden...
The funny thing is that they seriously consider themselves a "superior race", while behaving
like wild barbarians.
Such opinions/articles of "Western civilized people" cause only a condescending smile,
nothing more. So let's let George Will entertain us.
I find it pretty bizzarre how western media obsessively try to portray the Defender
incident as a some sort of "victory" for "civilized nations".
What exactly is the victory here? The fact that Russia only resorted to warning fire and
didn't blow up the ship?
Decades of propaganda masquerading as news has led most "educated" Americans into a Matrix
of false narratives. Should you dare mention election fraud or question the safety of COVID
vaccines in the presences of anyone who considers the NY Times and Wash Post as the "papers
of record", they will be happy to inform you that you are "captured" by false news. Dialogue
with these true believers has become almost impossible. We are the indispensable, civilized
nation, don't you understand basic facts?
My sister, who is truly a good-hearted person, unfortunately keeps CNN and MSNBC on most
of the day in her small apartment, and lives for The NY Times, which she pours over,
especially the weekend edition. She knows that Putin is evil and Russia is a bad place to
live, etc etc. I got rid of my TV ten years ago and started looking elsewhere for my
information. I live in a rural area of a Red state, she lives in Manhattan. We have to stick
to topics that revolve around museums, gardening, and food.
This is precisely the type of arrogance that has led to US leaving Afghanistan with their
pants down - having spent untold Trillions of dollars and having nothing to show for it. And
soon, leaving Iraq and Syria too. It reminds me of how the US left Vietnam and Cambodia.
The 'White' establishment in Washington and across the US military industrial complex, has
an air of superiority and always seem to feel that they can subjugate via throwing money at
people! This in effect turns everyone they deal with into Whores (yes, prostitutes). Its
fundamentally humiliating, and sews the seeds of corruption - both economic and moral. Then,
they are shocked that there's a back clash!
The Taliban succeeded not with arms - but by projecting a completely different narrative
of "Morality (i.e. non-corruption), honor, and even intermingled nationalism with their
narrative". They projected a story that suggested that new Afghan daughters would not turn
into Britney Spears or porn stars.
And, believe it or not, the Chinese see themselves as having been fundamentally humiliated
by the West and couch their efforts as a struggle for their civilization (its not ideological
or even economic) - they are fighting for honor and respect.
Western Civilization (and western elite) on the left and right are fundamentally
materialistic. They worship money, and simply don't understand it when others don't. When
they talk about superiority, they are basically saying the worship of money rules supreme.
You sort of become dignified in the west if you have a lot of wealth. They want to turn the
whole world into prostitutes. Policy and laws are driven by material considerations.
Now, I am not saying that spirituality or religion is good; and in fact, the Chinese are
not driven by religious zeal (they are, on the whole, non-religious). What I am saying is
that - no matter how its expressed - be it through religion, through culture, through
rhetoric, etc. - all this back clash is really a struggle for respect, 'honor' and thus a
push back to Western Arrogance, and the humiliation it has caused. The West simply doesn't
understand that there are societies - especially in the east, that value honor over other
things.
When Trump calls other people losers, he is basically saying he is richer, they are
poorer. In his mind, winning, is all about money. When people write articles about the
superiority of a civilization - they are implicitly putting other people down. That's not
just arrogant, its rude and disrespectful. Its basically like a teenager judging their
parents. How dare a newly formed nation (the US), judge or differentiate or even pretend to
be superior to the Chinese, Persians etc.?
Our foreign policy (and rhetoric) in the West has to completely change. We have to be
really careful, because, (honestly), it won't be very long before these other (inferior)
civilizations actually take over global leadership. Then how will we want to be treated?
Don't for a second think these folks can't build great gadgets that go to Mars! Oh, did China
just do that? Does Iran have a space program? Did they just make their own vaccines? Once
they start trading among themselves without using the USD greenback, we are finished.
Some notable recent achievements of 'civilised' nations include:
-Illegal invasion and bombing of multiple non-aggressor nations
-Overthrowing of democratically elected Governments
-Support of extremist and oppressive regimes
-Sponsoring of terrorism, including weapon sales to ISIS
-Corruption of once trusted institutions like the UN and OPCW
...when all she did was offer slight resistance to Western aggression? The key event was
the August 2013 false-flag
gas attack and massacre of hostages in Ghouta in Damascus.
What really angered the West was the Russian
fleet in the Mediterranean that prevented the NATO attack on Syria. (You will not find a
single word of this in Western media.) This is why Crimea needed to be captured by the West.
As revenge and deterrence against the Russian agression.
The standoff was first described by Israel Shamir in
October 2013:
"The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine
shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them -
the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and
supported by Chinese warships.
Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to
reach their destination."
A longer description was published by Australianvoice in
2015:
"So why didn't the US and France attack Syria? It seems obvious that the Russians and
Chinese simply explained that an attack on Syria by US and French forces would be met by a
Russian/Chinese attack on US and French warships. Obama wisely decided not to start WW III
in September 2013." Can Russia Block Regime Change In Syria Again?
In my own comments from 2013 I tried to understand the mission of the Russian fleet. This
is what I believed Putin's orders to the fleet were:
To sink any NATO ship involved in illegal aggression against Syria.
You have the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons in self-defense.
I am sure NATO admirals understood the situation the same way. I am not sure of the
American leadership in Washington.
Insulting language aside, the narrative they are trying to create is that there is an
anti-Russia, anti-China trend developing and that those sitting on the fence would be wise to
join the bandwagon.
This will be particularly effective on the majority of folks who barely scan headlines and
skim articles. Falun Gong/CIA mouthpiece Epoch Times is on board with this, based on recent
headlines.
Wikipedia has a list of reliable
and unreliable sources . "Reliable" are those sources that are under the direct control
of the US regime. Any degree of independence from the regime makes the source "unreliable."
WaPo and NYT are at the top of the list of reliable sources.
This is the diametric opposite of how Wikispooks defines reliability.
Reliability of sources is directly proportional to their distance *from* power.
At A Closer Look on Syria (ACLOS) we only trust primary sources.
Makes me remember the cornerstone work from former Argentine president DF Sarmiento, who
dealt with "Civilization or Barbarism" in his book "Facundo". Of course, his position was the
"civilized" one.
Those "civilized" succeeded in creating a country submitted to the British rule, selling
cheap crops and getting expensive manufactures, with a privileged minority living lavishly
and a great majority, in misery.
Also, their "civilized" methods to impose their project was the bloody "Police War"
This article is fundamentally about propaganda and "soft power".
Soft power in foreign policy is usually defined when other countries defer to your
judgement without threat of punishment or promise of gain.
In other words, if other countries support your country without a "carrot or stick"
approach, you have soft power.
For years, the US simply assumed other "civilized" of the western world would dutifully
follow along in US footsteps due to unshakeable trust in America's moral authority. The
western media played a crucial role by suppressing news regarding any atrocities the western
powers committed and amplifying any perceived threats or aggressions from "enemies".
Now, with the age of the internet, western audiences can read news from all over the world
and that has been a catastrophe for western powers. We can now see real-time debunking of
propaganda.
In the past, the British would have easily passed off the recent destroyer provocation as
pure Russian aggression and could expect outrage from all western aligned countries. The EU
and US populations could have easily been whipped into a frenzy and DEMANDED reprisals
against Russia if not outright war. Something similar to a "Gulf of Tonkin" moment.
But, that did not happen. People all over the world now know NOTHING from the US or
British press is to be trusted. People also now know NATO routinely try to stir up trouble
and provoke Russia.
So, Americans and even British citizens displayed no widespread outrage because they
simply did not believe their own government's and compliant media's side of the story.
US and British "soft power" are long gone. No one trusts them. No one wants to follow them
into anymore disastrous wars of aggression.
Western media still do not understand this and cannot figure out why so many refuse
western vaccines or support the newest color revolutions.
They cast Germany as a victim or potential victim of foreign aggressors, as a peace-loving
nation forced to take up arms to protect its populace or defend European civilization
against Communism.
I remember a tv history program that had interviews with German soldiers.
I recall one who had seen/participated in going from village to village in the USSR
hanging local communist leaders. He said they had been taught that by doing this
they were "protecting civilization".
Arrogance is not a deadly disease or even a hindrance for mainstream presstitutes; it is a
job qualification, making them all the more manipulable and manipulative. And so, as with
Michael Gordon, Judith Miller, Brett Stephens and David Sanger (essentially all of them
pulling double duty for the apartheid state), people will die from their propaganda, but they
will advance.
Name a leader with moral courage and integrity among suzerainties (private plantations).
Nations without integrity and filled with Orcs (individuals without conscience), can't be
civilized. They're EVIL vassals of Saruman & Sauron, manipulated by Wormtongue.
"The true equation is 'democracy' = government by world financiers."
– J.R.R. Tolkien
Henry Kissinger, in his interview with Chatham House stated, "the United States is in a
CRISIS of confidence... America has committed great moral wrongs." What are U$A's core
values?
According to a CFR member :
"How lucky I am that my mother studied with JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis and WH Auden and that
she passed on to me a command of language that permits me to "tell the story" of the world
economy in plain English. She would have been delighted that I managed to show that the evil
Gollum from Tolkien's tales lives above the doorway in the Oval Office, which he
certainly does. I saw him there myself. He may have found a new perch over at The Federal
Reserve Bank as well."
– Excerpt From, Signals: The Breakdown of the Social Contract and the Rise of
Geopolitics by Dr Philippa Malmgren
The Financial Empire has ran out of LUCK. "In God We Trust"
I thought moral superiority was the official position of NATO. The explicit intent is to
weaponize human rights and democracy . So it is not merely the mundane 'our group is better'
or the somewhat nostalgic western form of moral superiority, it's weaponized moral
superiority.
George Will looking good I tellya. Anybody know who does his embalming?
Doesn't Will's article reek of Nazi propaganda against the Russians as a mongrel Asiatic
uncivilized people? Of course to attack the Chinese as uncivilized? China uncivilized? 5,000
years of continuous culture? The Russians and Chinese must join up with civilization.
Unfortunately at least in the West race is only about skin color. It certainly wasn't the
case with the original Nazis. Will's piece is blatantly racist out of the tradition of
Nazism.
Oxford and the Ivy League. The training grounds for the Anglo American deep state and the
cheerleaders of the empire. Expect nothing more of these deeply under educated sudo
intellectuals.
Plenty of people who work for the MIC and in various policy circles/think tanks have
plenty "to show for it" where all these wars are concerned. Many billions of dollars were
siphoned upwards and outwards into the bank accounts and expensive homes of the managerial
and executive classes (even the hazard pay folks who actually went to the places "we" were
bombing) not just at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Booz Allen, etc. but plenty of lesser known
"socioeconomically disadvantaged" Small Businesses (proper noun in this context) companies
who utilized the services of an army of consultants to glom onto the war machine. In most
cases of the larger firms, Wall Street handled the IPOs long ago, and these companies have
entire (much less profitable) divisions dedicated to state and local governments to
"diversify" their business portfolios in case the people finally get sick of war. But that
rarely happens in any real sense because the corporate establishment "legacy media" makes
sure that there's always an uncivilized country to bomb or threaten....and that means the
"defense" department needs loads of services, weapons, and process improvement consultants
all the time. War is a racket; always has been, always will be.
Unfortunately, it seems that truly large segments of the population in the developed
western countries and especially in the Anglo-sphere believe the propaganda emanating from
the imperial mouthpieces. The US citizenry is a case study in manipulating the public.
Indeed, the DNC liberals are effectively the vanguard of the pro-war movement, espouse
racist Rusophobia and conitnue Trump's hostility to China. The so-cslled conservatives follow
their own tradition of imperial mobilization behind the Washington regime: Chin,Latin
America, the very people who berated the 'Deep State' now paise its subversive activities
against the targeted left-wing governments.
As for the moribund left - it would be better described as leftovers - it is often taken
for a ride as long as the imperial messaging is promoted by the liberal media. The excuses
for imperialism are a constant for many of them (even as they call themselves
anti-imperialists) and the beleaguered voicesfor the truth are far and few. The latter often
face silencing campaigns not just from the establishment hacks, but from their own supposed
ideological comrades, who are, of course, in truth nothing of the sort.
All in all, despite the consistent record of manipulative propaganda and utter criminality
the imperial regime never loses the support of the critical masss of the citizenry.
All in all, despite the consistent record of manipulative propaganda and utter criminality
the imperial regime never loses the support of the critical masss of the citizenry.
Maybe 50% of the people here bother to vote, in IMPORTANT elections. Can be a lot less if
the election is not important. The only people still engaged politically here at all are the
people with good jobs. The American people have given up. And there are a lot of angry people
running around, with guns. Claiming the citizenry here support the government is imperial
propaganda. Why do you think they like mercenaries and proxies so much? And this is all in
great contrast to when I was young 50 years ago.
A number of international papers
report today on the Israeli hacking company NSO which sells snooping software to various
regimes. The software is then used to hijack the phones of regime enemies, political
competition or obnoxious journalists. All of that was already well known but the story has
new legs as several hundreds of people who were spied on can now be named.
The phones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in
countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and also known to have been
clients of the Israeli firm, NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely
unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation found.
The list does not identify who put the numbers on it, or why, and it is unknown how many
of the phones were targeted or surveilled. But forensic analysis of the 37 smartphones
shows that many display a tight correlation between time stamps associated with a number on
the list and the initiation of surveillance, in some cases as brief as a few seconds.
Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism nonprofit, and Amnesty International, a
human rights group, had access to the list and shared it with the news organizations, which
did further research and analysis. Amnesty's Security Lab did the forensic analyses on the
smartphones.
The numbers on the list are unattributed, but reporters were able to identify more than
1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four
continents.
Who might have made such a list and who would give it to Amnesty and Forbidden
Stories?
NSO is one of the Israeli companies that is used to monetize the work of the Israel's
military intelligence unit 8200. 'Former' members of 8200 move to NSO to produce spy tools
which are then sold to foreign governments. The license price is $7 to 8 million per 50
phones to be snooped at. It is a shady but lucrative business for the company and for the
state of Israel.
NSO denies the allegations that its software is used for harmful proposes with
a lot of bullshittery :
The report by Forbidden Stories is full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories
that raise serious doubts about the reliability and interests of the sources. It seems like
the "unidentified sources" have supplied information that has no factual basis and are far
from reality.
After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their report.
Their sources have supplied them with information which has no factual basis, as evident by
the lack of supporting documentation for many of their claims. In fact, these allegations
are so outrageous and far from reality, that NSO is considering a defamation lawsuit.
The reports make, for example, the claim that the Indian government under Prime Minister
Narendra Modi has used the NSO software to spy on the
leader of the opposition party Rahul Gandhi.
How could NSO deny that allegation? It can't.
Further down in the NSO's statement the company
contradicts itself on the issues:
How do you explain the
suspiciously-timed, and simultaneous, Five Eyes denunciation of China for alleged hacking of
Microsoft? Is it a way of deflecting too much wrath on Israel? Or, is b wrong and the China
story serves as real distraction.
thanks b.. it is an interesting development which seems to pit the usa against israel... i am
having a hard time appreciating this... maybe... interesting conundrum snowden paints himself
into... @ 1 prof... there are plenty of distractions to go around.. hard to know...
In our day-and-age, all "Spectacular Stories" serve as distractions, although some are
genuine scoops illuminating criminal behavior involving state actors. Ultimately, this scoop
provides much more leverage for Putin's ongoing insistence that an International Treaty
dealing with all things Cyber including Cyber-crime be convened ASAP.
"Who has an interest in shutting NSO down or to at least make its business more
difficult?
The competition I'd say. And the only real one in that field is the National Security Agency
of the United States."
There is at least one other possibility.
The leak could be from a highly sophisticated state actor that needs to "blind" US and
especially Israeli intelligence services temporarily.
That could very easily be China, Russia or even Iran. Some of their assets could be on the
list.
Exposing the service weakens, or possibly destroys, it until another workaround is
found.
China might do this to push customers towards some of their cellphones that are supposedly
immune to this.
Russia and Iran might need to blind Mossad, NSA and CIA or upcoming operations in Syria,
Iraq and possibly Afghanistan.
Weird to have the US burn an Israeli spy operation (I'd be surprised if they didn't build
back doors into their own software) in such a public manner.
The only reason I can think of for the US to shut NSO down is if they refused to share
information they had gathered with the NSA and so they were put out of business.
Snowden didn't have a problem with the NSA et al spying on foreign adversaries. He had a
problem when the NSA was spying illegally on US citizens.
The 'West' could be using it as a weapon to rein in Israel, which it sees as getting more
and more out of control. Netanyahu might be gone but the policies that he represents will not
just disappear.
The mass media didn't like Israel's destruction of the building in Gaza where the
Associated Press had its offices. How are the media supposed to publish reports from places
where they don't have anywhere to work?
Western governments are exasperated that Israel doesn't even pretend to have any respect
for international law and human rights. Nobody in power in the West cares about those things
either, and they really want to support Israel, but doing that is a lot harder when Israel
makes it so obvious that it is a colonial aggressor.
As the Guardian reported yesterday, "The Israeli minister of defence closely regulates
NSO, granting individual export licences before its surveillance technology can be sold to a
new country."
The attack on NSO looks like a message to the Israeli state.
I think you are very wrong in your assessment that this is about business and getting rid
of the competition. Information isn`t about money. It is about power.
The people at MoA might not have noticed it because of ideological bias but Netanyahu and
Biden (and before him Obama) were quite hostile towards each other. To a degree they were
almost waging a kind of undercover cold war against each other (culminating in United Nations
Security Council Resolution 2334).
In this context I don`t believe the "former" Israelis spies at NSO are just Isrealis. They
are a specific kind of Israelis. Namely extreme-right Israelis/Likud loyalists. Netanyahu
created his own private unit 8200 - outside of the Israeli state. The profit that NSO made
were just the "former" spies regular payment.
The USA - with the consent and probably active assistance of the new Israeli government -
took Netanyahus private intelligence service down.
The US has found out that the NSO spyware can be used BY the "other regimes" against US
leaders. Or at least against US assets.
The Israelis would sell their wares to anyone with a buck (or shekel, as the buck is
getting rather uncertain as a money).
IE. Saudi buys a section of numbers and then decides to track and eliminate "opposants".
BUT if there are CIA personnel implanted with a good cover story, then OOOPS, "another one
bites the dust".
What laws exist in your nation to prevent illegal snooping?
How about profiling by the digital companies? Nations need to pass laws making it a
CRIMINAL offense to conduct snooping or hacking without a warrant. What happened to Apple's
claims about its devices' superior security and privacy?
Let's see what sanctions or criminal ACTIONS are taken against NSO, its executives and
other companies. Is any of the information captured by NSO shared with Israel &/or Five
Eyes? Are their financial accounts frozen? Let's see how they're treated compared to
Huawei.
Are Dark web sites linked to the REvil ransomware gang operating? Shutdown all illegal
snooping and cyber crimes entities.
A rule or law isn't just and fair if it doesn't applies to everyone, and they can't be
applied at the whims of powerful. Laws and rules applied unequally have no credibility and
legitimacy.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
– Martin Luther King Jr.
"A rule or law isn't just and fair if it doesn't applies to everyone, and they can't be
applied at the whims of powerful. Laws and rules applied unequally have no credibility and
legitimacy."
Max, are you sure you have got your feet on this planet earth? If there is one factor that
is common to his era, is that "Justice" is no longer blindfolded, but is looking out for the
best interests of "friends".
Can you name a few countries where your ideal is the norm?
*****
PS. Don't bother, as I won't reply, I'm off to bed to dream of a perfect world. Much easier,
and I can do it lying down.
Another possible scenario is that the NSO has been poaching people and/or techniques from US
intel agencies for use in its for-profit schemes.
That is one thing which is guaranteed to get a negative reaction - regardless of who is doing
it and which party is in power.
We do know that NSO has been very active on the exploit buying dark webs since their
inception...
The above article also notes that NSO was acquired by Francisco Partners in 2010...
Thus maybe all this is purely a capability play: The US is falling behind and so wants to
bring in house, more capability. One way is to squeeze an existing successful player so that
they have to cooperate/sell out...
All I can be sure of, is that none of the present foofaraw has anything to do with the
truth.
"In fact, these allegations are so outrageous and far from reality, that NSO is
considering a defamation lawsuit."
Ya..Right. That's not remotely gonna happen!
The NSO 'Group" would have to provide a substantial amount of their very sensitive
'operational' & 'proprietary' internal documents - which would most certainly be
requested in discovery - to any of the possible defendants should NSO be stupid/arrogant
enough to actually file a formal suit of "defamation" in a any US court.
Talk about a "defamation" legal case that would get shut down faster than Mueller's show
indictment of 13 'Russian' agents and their related businesses that were reportedly part of
the now infamous "Guccifer 2.0" "Hack"
When these "Russian" hackers simply countered by producing a surprise Washington based
legal team that publically agreed to call Mueller's bluff and have the all of the 'indicted'
defendants actually appear in court, they immediately "requested" - via the discovery process
- all relevant documents that the Mueller team purportedly had that confirmed that their was
any actual or attempted (hacking) criminality.
VIA POLITICO:
The 13 people charged in the high-profile indictment in February are considered unlikely to
ever appear in a U.S. court. The three businesses accused of facilitating the alleged
Russian troll farm operation -- the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management, and
Concord Catering -- were also expected to simply ignore the American criminal proceedings.
Last month, however, a pair of Washington-area lawyers suddenly surfaced in the case,
notifying the court that they represent Concord Management. POLITICO reported at the time
that the move appeared to be a bid to force Mueller's team to turn over relevant evidence
to the Russian firm and perhaps even to bait prosecutors into an embarrassing dismissal in
order to avoid disclosing sensitive information.
The NSO Group is never going to even considering this "defamation" route, but their
threatening legal bluster is pure... Hutzpa!
In a world in which this can be done, the worst of governments will do it, and in the worst
ways.
The US and other governments have promoted this. Their own intelligence services use it.
They actively oppose efforts to block it, as happened with private encryption ideas.
We can't both make it possible and prevent the bad guys from doing it.
We have deliberately made it possible, and opposed serious efforts to protect private life
against it. Now we are surprised?
@ Stonebird (#17), you missed the pun in those words. Maybe you're sleeping while reading.
The Financial Empire and its lackeys want a "rules-based international order" and
China-Russia... want a "rule of international laws". Both are meaningless and worthless as
they're applied unequally. I am awake and in sync with REALITY. Just playing with these two
ideas. We have the law of the jungle. However, Orcs (individuals without conscience –
dark souls) are worse than animals in greed, deceits and killing.
"The Black Speech of Mordor need to be heard in every corner of the world!"
Interesting story but I agree that the hype is overblown because nothing much will change
even if this NSO outfit has a harder time flogging its spyware to all and sundry.
The NSA, CIA, MI5/6, Mossad and the 5 Lies spies will continue spying on friend and foe
alike and tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google will likewise continue their
unethical surveillance practices and will keep passing on private citizen's data to
government spy agencies. So it goes.
For a dissident Snowden is a lightweight. His beef wasn't, as b points out, with the NSA
itself, he just didn't like them spying on Americans within the USA. He had no problem spying
on people in other countries as long as the proper 'rules' were followed. That, almost by
definition, makes him a limited hangout.
The AI report notes that this software was abandoned in 2018 for cloud implementations to
help hide responsibility;
Having Amazon AWS dump services naming NSO probably has no effect at all, as NSO will just
use other names;
" However, Orcs (individuals without conscience – dark souls) are worse than animals
in greed, deceits and killing."
Non-human animals operate on a genetically programmed autopilot and are not responsible
for their actions.
Humans are partially engineered by genetics but unlike the "lower" animals they have the
power to choose which actions they will take and they are therefore responsible for their
choices.
A bear or a mountain lion will attack a human when it is injured or when protecting its
young, but one can't blame these animals for exercising their survival instincts.
Human beings are the only mammal, indeed the only animal, that is capable of evil, i.e.
deliberately choosing to harm or kill other humans for profit or personal gain.
On this subject, I suggest barflies read the excellent post on the previous MoA Week in
Review thread by:
Posted by: Debsisdead | Jul 19 2021 1:36 utc | 71
My reply @167 and Uncle T's further comment.
The book on this criminal conduct is called 'Murdoch's Pirates.' The detestable Amazon
have it at 'unavailable' however it is available at Australian bookseller Booktopia.
How do you explain the suspiciously-timed, and simultaneous, Five Eyes denunciation of
China for alleged hacking of Microsoft? Is it a way of deflecting too much wrath on Israel?
Or, is b wrong and the China story serves as real distraction.
Posted by: Prof | Jul 19 2021 18:09 utc | 1
If the US navy were to purchase leaky boats would it not be absurd for it to then blame
Russia or China for the influx of water?
If the US government, and US industry, purchase software full of holes is it not equally
absurd for them to blame a foreign entity for any resulting leaks?
In answering these questions it is worthwhile to remember that US government entities
support the insertion of backdoors in US commercial software. Such backdoors can be
identified and exploited by 3rd parties.
If this somewhat limp-wristed takedown of NSO did not have the support of apartheid Israel's
intelligence services, the graun would not be pushing the story.
It is that simple, the guardian is run by rabid zionists such as Jonathon Freedland deputy
editor, who retains editorial control from the second seat rather than #1 simply because the
zionist board wanted to stroke the fishwrap's woke credentials by having a female editor.
Foreign news and england news all have many zionist journos.
Now even the sports desk features stories by a bloke called Jacob Steinberg 'n sport is not
generally an interest of jews.
Also if NSO a corporation born to advance particular media interests were in fact a tool of
apartheid israel's intelligence establishment, it is unlikely that it would have tried to
sue the graun back in 2019.
None of that precludes Mossad plants working at NSO, in fact the move against it would
suggest that zionist intelligence has wrung the organisation dry.
This 'takedown' suggests to me that these services will continue, but not for everyone as
before. ME governments will never again gain full access, no matter how friendly they may
claim to be. All future contracts with whatever entity follows will only proceed if permitted
by FukUSi.
div> Since the software is licensed by the number of phones it's installed
on, NSO must have a means of determining the device ID/phone number of each phone (You wouldn't
trust some shady third-world regime to be honest, would you?
Since the software is licensed by the number of phones it's installed on, NSO must have a
means of determining the device ID/phone number of each phone (You wouldn't trust some shady
third-world regime to be honest, would you?
The Israeli connection just read an account on AC by Rod Dreher and so far, writers
are downplaying the connection to Israel. If it was a Chinese or Russian company we would be
blaming Putin.
We blame Putin for every criminal in Russia but I don't see anyone blaming Israel for a
product they they authorized for export. Wow.
It does take two to tango, so I do understand talking about the clients who bought the
product but if they have the export version of the spyware the it's obvious that Israel has
the super-duper lethal version but that's okay. No biggie. But Iran having any weapons to
defend their own country is a scandal.
US taxpayers subsidize the Israeli military industry. The zionists then developed tools which
they use against palestinians and their adversaries. The same technologies are later sold at
a profit to various United states security agencies. A wonderful self licking ice cream cone
of christian zionism, so much winning... Paying up the wazoo for our own eslavement. Last I
checked, the chosen one's were never held accountable for their role prior to 911 operations.
The Amerikastani Con-serve-ative manages to write a whole article about this without
mentioning the name of the "country" that created and exported this software.
This same Amerikastani Con-serve-ative pretends to champion free speech but doesn't permit
the slightest criticism of this same "nation", the racist fascist apartheid zionist settler
colony in Occupied Palestine. In fact the very mention of the word "zionist" will get your
comment removed.
I'm of the school of thought that Snowden is still an active CIA asset used to assist in
discrediting government agencies, such as the NSA, to allow private corporations to take
their place in data collection and dissemination. Alphabet, and it's AI/quantum computers
should not be ignored in this particular scenario
Human beings with conscience are INNER directed. Those without strong conscience (Orcs)
are OUTER directed and thereby easily captured, corrupted and controlled. Human beings with
great conscience (soul/spirit), strong mind and healthy body are PARAGONS.
Orcs were once elves. They got programmed by the dark forces of Saruman & Sauron
(Sin). Sauron's EYE is for intimidation. Seeing it sends fear into the hearts of people and
sucks away their courage. "When did we let evil become stronger than us?" Communicate
reality, truth and expose power freely!
There is still light to defeat the darkness. May your light light others
🕯🕯🕯
Ultimately, this scoop provides much more leverage for Putin's ongoing insistence that an
International Treaty dealing with all things Cyber including Cyber-crime be convened ASAP.
Israel and the UK will never sign such a protocol. The USA? only if it is worthless.
Mar man #4
The leak could be from a highly sophisticated state actor that needs to "blind" US and
especially Israeli intelligence services temporarily.
That could very easily be China, Russia or even Iran. Some of their assets could be on
the list.
"Snowden's opinion on this is kind of strange". Snowden's task, almost a decade ago now,
was to facilitate the passage of CISPA. Greenwald was the PR guy. Remember Obama saying we
need to have a conversation about privacy versus security? Well, Snowden and Greewald helped
him to have the conversation on his terms. And the media giants will be forever grateful.
Greenwald even got his own website. So no, nothing strange about what Snowden said. It was in
his script. Was, is and always will be an asset.
In a broader context:
"In a corporatist system of government, where there is no separation between corporate power
and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. The actual government as it
actually exists is censoring the speech not just of its own people, but people around the
world. If US law had placed as much emphasis on the separation of corporation and state as it
had on the separation of church and state, the country would be unrecognizably different from
what we see today."
"It's A Private Company So It's Not Censorship"
Sanctions? Sanctions, did anybody mention sanctions for those carrying out Cyber attacks?
(Particularly ones that target "Freedom of speech" and Journalists.)
Apple is also zionist controlled, so not surprising that NSO had all internal details to
hack their iPhones, via tribal leakers or approved connections. So is Amazon, so their cloud
service for NSO continues under other cover.
Those in danger should not use Apple or Amazon-based or other zionist-controlled products
or services. A catalog of those might help.
I don't buy it. It doesn't sound plausible to me as presented.
One possibility is that it is a camouflaged operation to take down non-attributably spy
software that has fallen into the wrong hands, and thereby contrary to US interests. For
example, the new Myanmar government is sure to be using the software to observe the
US-sponsored miscreants from the Aung San Su Kyi regime who are bombing schools, hospitals
and government offices, and to seek out wanted criminals in hiding. The NSO take-down could
be an operation to take those licences out of operation. In that scenario those NSO customers
who are not anti-US might get support to continue operations as usual. As another example it
could also be used as a warning to the Saudis not to get too close to the Russians and
Chinese or ditch the US dollar, and not to accommodate to Iran.
Or maybe NSO just had the wrong political connections in the USA.
Whatever it may seem on the surface, that is what it surely is not.
div> I certainly can't compete on tech savvy as I have none, but doesn't
this perhaps line up with the summit decision between Putin and Biden to cooperate in terms of
policing cybercrime? Maybe that's too obvious, but I don't see that Snowden is contradicting
his own positions in that case. And of course, b, you are correct that the main culprit on
these matters is the US. Throwing the spotlight elsewhere however, doesn't mean it can't circle
around. Spotlights have a way of doing that.
I certainly can't compete on tech savvy as I have none, but doesn't this perhaps line up with
the summit decision between Putin and Biden to cooperate in terms of policing cybercrime?
Maybe that's too obvious, but I don't see that Snowden is contradicting his own positions in
that case. And of course, b, you are correct that the main culprit on these matters is the
US. Throwing the spotlight elsewhere however, doesn't mean it can't circle around. Spotlights
have a way of doing that.
The interesting backdrop to all this is that Israel has a *huge* presence in all things
associated with cybersecurity and have for years. The IDF's Talpiot plan no doubt enviously
eyed the NSA tapping into everyone's internet/cellphone traffic and wanted a piece of the
action. The financial intelligence alone would make it hugely valuable, not to mention
blackmail opportunities and the means to exercise political control.
I wonder if the Intel's Haifa design bureau was behind the infamous "management engine"
installed on *every* Intel chip since 2008 (to, of course, "make administration easier")?
The discover of this "feature" precipitated a huge scandal not too many years back if you
recall...
This "feature" gave anyone who could access it the ability to snoop or change the code
running on the main CPU... anyone want to guess whether the Mossad knows how to get to
it?
@Simplicius | Jul 20 2021 15:15 utc | 57
"I wonder if the Intel's Haifa design bureau was behind the infamous "management engine"
installed on *every* Intel chip since 2008 (to, of course, "make administration easier")?"
I remember 30 years ago there was controversy over the NSA requiring hardware backdoors in
all phones. At the time, it was called the "Clipper chip". Reportedly, the program failed and
was never adopted. Apparently, as this article exposed, that is false and something like it
is installed in all phones and possibly computers manufactured for sale in the western
world.
Supposedly, the real story behind Huawei sanctions and kidnapping of their executive, is
Huawei phones have no NSA backdoor since the Chinese flatly refuse to cooperate with NSA.
Turns out the Microsoft hacking accusation against China wasn't a distraction against the
NSO scandal, but a capitalist reaction against the CPC's growing containment of their own big
tech capitalists:
For people who don't know: this Kara Swisher is clearly an USG asset (or behaves exactly
like one). Every column she writes is an unashamed apology to all the USG policies on big
tech and on all decisions of American big tech.
@ vk (#59), Your conclusion about Kara Swisher is good one. However, cast the net wider to
understand the NETWORK that she represents and find additional media
Orcs. Most likely she is an asset of the Global Financial Syndicate, acting as a
gatekeeper/porter/lobbyist in the technology arena. Her mentor Walter Mossberg was an asset
too? It is easy to identify Orcs!
Work Experience: WSJ, The Washington Post, New York Times, ... Who did she sell Recode to?
Who are financiers of Vox Media?
Education: Georgetown, Columbia University (many assets come from here)
While the theory from m at #13 about it being a personal tiff between Biden and Netanyahu has
some appeal I tend to believe it is more complex than that.
While Dems could accumulate some grudges against Netanyahu, they can be pretty thick
skinned on that. On the other hand, if Netanyahu used his budget to dig the dirt against his
opponents like Bennet, with NSO as the took, the grudge against NSO could be very strong on
the side of the current government of Israel. Internal strife between Likudniks is intense.
And the mantle of the ruler of Israel comes with perks, like the ability to plant stories in
WP and NYT.
The Government said the reform was needed as the existing acts, with the last update in
1989, are no longer enough to fight the "discernible and very real threat posed by state
threats".
The Home Office said it does "not consider that there is necessarily a distinction in
severity between espionage and the most serious unauthorised disclosures, in the same way
that there was in 1989".
[More at the link.]
If it was Russia or Iran that was selling such spyware, would FUKUS react with measures
against the press or with sanctions and efforts to protect the press?
On the other hand, if Netanyahu used his budget to dig the dirt against his opponents like
Bennet, with NSO as the took, the grudge against NSO could be very strong on the side of the
current government of Israel. Internal strife between Likudniks is intense. And the mantle of
the ruler of Israel comes with perks, like the ability to plant stories in WP and NYT.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jul 20 2021 19:05 utc | 64
@64 Piotr Berman
This goes much deeper than just personal animosity.
For several years now there had been some kind of cultural war waging in Israel with the
populist leader - Netanyahu - on the one side and and most of the Israeli establishment - the
Mossad, the generals and the High Court - against him. The generals eventually acted by
founding their own party (with the former TV presenter Lapid at it`s head) and deposed
Netanyahu.
This cultural war in Israel is not only very similar to the cultural war in the USA. The
two countries are so intervened with one another that both conflicts have kind of merged.
"This cultural war in Israel is not only very similar to the cultural war in the USA.
The two countries are so intervened with one another that both conflicts have kind of
merged."
Posted by: m | Jul 21 2021 9:41 utc | 67
Yes, not unrelated to the purge Biden seems to be planning here. Bibi made a big mistake
getting so cozy with Trump. I would wager Trump is going to be in the crosshairs too. And
that is likely to be divisive, in both places.
So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don't be
surprised if bad things start happening.
I received another "Our Terms Have Changed" email from a Big Tech quasi-monopoly, and for a
change I actually read this one. It was a revelation on multiple fronts. I'm reprinting it here
for your reading pleasure:
We wanted to let you know that we recently updated our Conditions of Use.
What hasn't changed:
Your use constitutes your agreement to our Conditions of Use.
We own all the content you create on our platform, devices and networks, and are free to
monetize it by any means we choose.
We own all the data we collect on you, your devices, purchases, social networks, views,
associations, beliefs and illicit viewing, your location data, who you are in proximity to,
and whatever data the networked devices in your home, vehicles and workplaces collect.
We have the unrestricted right to ban you and all your content, shadow-ban you and all
your content, i.e., generate the illusion that your content is freely, publicly available,
and erase your digital presence entirely such that you cease to exist except as a corporeal
body.
What has changed:
If we detect you have positive views on anti-trust enforcement, we may report you as a
"person of interest / potential domestic extremist" to the National Security Agency and other
federal agencies.
Rather than respond to all disputes algorithmically, we have established a Star Chamber of
our most biased, fanatical employees to adjudicate customer/user disputes in which the
customer/user refuses to accept the algorithmic mediation.
If a customer/user attempts to contact any enforcement agency regarding our algorithmic
mediation or Star Chamber adjudication, we reserve the unrestricted rights to:
a. Prepare voodoo dolls representing the user and stick pins into the doll while
chanting curses.
b. Hack the targeted user's accounts and blame it on Russian or Ukrainian hackers.
c. Rendition the user to a corrupt kleptocracy in which we retain undue influence, i.e.,
the United States.
Left unsaid, of course, is the potential for "accidents" to happen to anyone publicly
promoting anti-trust enforcement of Big Tech quasi-monopolies. Once totalitarianism has been
privatized , there are no rules that can't be ignored or broken by those behind the curtain .
So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don't be surprised
if bad things start happening.
Editor's note: this is satire. If I disappear, then you'll know who has no sense of irony or
humor.
A smartphone is a spying device from which one also can make phone calls. After Prism is
should be clear to anybody that goverments intercepts your email messages and record your phone
calls just because they can.
"..reporters identified more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries. They included
several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists,
189 journalists and more than 600 politicians and government officials – including several
heads of state and prime ministers." -- and all those idiots use plain vanilla Anroid or IOS.
Nice. They probably have no money to buy a basic phone for $14 or so. That does not save from
wiretapping but at least saves from such malware.
Southfront reports that an Israeli company's spyware was used in attempted and successful
hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights
activists around the world, according to an investigation by 17 media organizations, published
on July 18th.
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One of the organizations, The Washington Post, said the Pegasus spyware licensed by
Israel-based NSO Group also was used to target phones belonging to two women close to Jamal
Khashoggi, a Post columnist murdered at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018.
One of them was his fiancee, and she and the other woman were targeted both before and after
his death.
The Guardian, another of the media outlets, said the investigation suggested "widespread and
continuing abuse" of NSO's hacking software , described as malware that infects smartphones to
enable the extraction of messages, photos and emails; record calls; and secretly activate
microphones.
The investigation highlights widespread and continuing abuse of NSO's hacking spyware called
'Pegasus' which the company confirms is only intended for use against terrorist groups, drug
and human traffickers, and criminals.
Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow operators
of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including secretly activate
microphones and cameras.
Based on the investigation, the leak contains a list of 50,000 phone numbers that have been
identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.
The list includes many close family members of one country's ruler, suggesting he might have
instructed the country's intelligence agencies to explore the possibility of tracking and
spying on their own relatives.
anti-bolshevik 8 hours ago (Edited)
Two articles from Motherboard Vice:
Is Israel EXEMPT from the ' rules-based order ' that Biden / Blinken / Yellen constantly
affirm?
Any incoming Sanctions? Any Treasury asset-seziures?
Motherboard uncovered more evidence that NSO Group ran hacking infrastructure in
the United States.
A former NSO employee provided Motherboard with the IP address of a server setup to
infect phones with NSO's Pegasus hacking tool. Motherboard granted the source anonymity
to protect them from retaliation from the company.
The licensor of software is not the user of the software. An Israeli company developed
it and may have used it.
In weapons terms, an Israeli company was the arms developer.
However, there are the licensees and users of the software. The factions and individuals
who actually used this weapon of war and political coercion.
In weapons terms, there are others, like the US and other country intelligence
communities who will be the ones who pulled the trigger.
The "trigger pullers include the Bolshevik Democrat party and the Biden campaign, which
used it to control citizens through intelligence gathering (remember Judge Roberts?) and
extract political donations from corporations and rich individuals. Don't forget the
Globalist GOP RINOs and Tech monopolists, who have used this weapon to control and subvert
anyone that they need to subjugate.
Bye bye Apple, Xiomi and Google Android. You just lost your market of brainwashed sheep
for new mobile phones. Even the unwashed Joe Six-Packs of this world now know they are
being manipulated with the phones that are so expensive.
MASTER OF UNIVERSE 11 hours ago
I've spent many years studying Experimental Psychology & Personality Theory and can
honestly state that malware can't determine appropriate behavioural signals intelligence
enough to act responsibly, or judiciously.
Algos are dependent upon Behavioural Science & human analytics. They are crude tools
that employ hit & miss techniques that hardly ever work accurately.
Israeli intelligence tries to look state of the art, but they are just as dimwitted as
the CIA.
WorkingClassMan 10 hours ago
They might be dimwitted and hamfisted but like an elephant with a lobotomy they can
still do a lot of damage flailing around. Worst part about it is them not caring about the
consequences.
NAV 10 hours ago remove link
It's amazing how the "dimwits" control the entire apparatus of the most powerful Empire
in the world and the entire world media.
2banana 12 hours ago (Edited)
It's not just some politicians and journalists.
It's everyone.
Your phone spys on you in every possible way.
Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow
operators of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including
secretly activate microphones and cameras.
gregga777 12 hours ago (Edited)
It's been widely for at least a decade that carrying a smart phone is really like wiring
oneself up for 24/7/365 audio and/or video surveillance. They only have themselves to blame
if they've been spied upon by the world's so-called secret intelligence agencies.
[Ed. The next time in a crowded public space, turn on Wi-Fi and count the number of
unlocked phones under the "Other Networks" menu.]
truth or go home 12 hours ago
If you have no phone, and no facebook, then you are likely immune from prosecution. My
neighbor the Fed agent told me 10 years ago that these two sources are 90% of every
investigation. That number has only gone up. They track you with it, they find out your
contacts with it. They find out your secrets with it. Just try to get either of those
things anonymously. You can't.
philipat 11 hours ago remove link
Land of the Free....
Ura Bonehead PREMIUM 7 hours ago
'truth or go home', 'having no Facebook' doesn't help you as FB secures the same
information via data-sharing arrangements with any number of apps you may download, that
came on your phone, or are embedded deep on your phone. Just a fact.
Steeley 4 hours ago
A friend that lives in Pahrump, NV reports that every time he crosses into California a
smart phone Covid Health Tracking App activates and he starts getting notifications. Can't
turn it off or find where it resides. When he crosses back into Nevada it stops.
E5 10 hours ago
"After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their
report,"
Really? So if 99 claims are true and one false? Never did they say there was truth to
the accusation that they hacked phones.
If you are going to commit a crime I suppose you want to "issue a statement" that you
didn't. I guess we have to ask them 2 more times: then it is a rule that you must tell all.
No minion can resist the same question three times.
zzmop 9 hours ago (Edited)
Keyword -'Israeli', Not Russian, Israeli, Not 'Russian hackers', Israeli hackers
eatapeach 9 hours ago
This is old news. Congresswoman Jane Harman was all for spying/eavesdropping until she
got busted selling her power to Israel, LOL.
consistentliving PREMIUM 7 hours ago
Not USA fake paper pushers but Mexican journalists deserve mention here
Revealed: murdered journalist's number selected by Mexican NSO client
Israel doesn't respect human rights!. Israel has been killing defenseless people in
Palestine for more than 50 years. The sad thing is that US support these genocidal sick
sycophats.
wizteknet 10 hours ago
Where's a list of infected software?
vova_3.2018 9 hours ago (Edited)
Where's a list of infected software?
If they take yr phone under control they'd have access to everything & then they can
use the info against you or anybody else in the info. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuBuyv6kUKI
Israeli spy-wear "Candiru" works a little bet different than Pegasus but is also used to
hack & track journalists and activists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWEJS0f6P6k
The magic number of "6 million" will be the Get out of Jail Card once again.
And, these idiots keep preaching about the great risk China poses...
Steeley 4 hours ago
Embedded in the OS...
Kugelhagel 12 hours ago (Edited)
Is that article an attempt to get some sympathy for "politicians", "journalists" and
"activists"? Try again.
HippieHaulers 11 hours ago
Exactly. Don't forget Kashogi was CIA. And they're using another asset (Snowden) to roll
this out. This story stinks.
WhiteCulture 7 hours ago (Edited)
I installed Nice Systems onto 600 desk tops in 2003 at 3 separate call centers, a call
monitoring and a PC, mainframe CICS, or email, screen scrape capability. When the call
audio was recorded we also captured whatever was on the screen. No doubt the government has
been doing this on our phones and all personal computers for over a decade.
TheInformed 7 hours ago
Your example shows that people are dumb, it's not evidence of some grand 'government
backdoor' conspiracy. Don't conflate the two.
two hoots 10 hours ago (Edited)
Forget the petty herd/individual surveillance, this is a "super power" tool for
investment opportunities, negotiation advantage, strategic decisions, military/covert
decisions, etc. you can be sure that the most improved (undisclosed) versions are in use in
the usual suspect country. Likely spying on the spy's that bought the software from them.
These are those steps beyond Nietzsche's amoral supra-man.
Globalist Overlord 12 hours ago
Whitney Webb was writing about this in 2018.
Snowden: Israeli Spyware Used By Governments to Pursue Journalists Targeted for
Assassination
If Pegasus is used against Human Traffic-ers, then why didnt they get Jeffrey Epstein
earlier?
Occams_Razor_Trader 11 hours ago
Why 'get' people when you can 'use' these people ........................?
RasinResin 11 hours ago
I use to be in IT and worked in association with Radcom. Now you may ask who is that?
They are the Israeli company that is truly behind all monitoring and spying of your phones
in America
"Reuters' spokesman Dave Moran said, "Journalists must be allowed to report the news
in the public interest without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are. We are
aware of the report and are looking into the matter."
I love the sanctimonious clutching of pearls, wringing of hands, and bleating from the
purveyors of CCP propaganda, woketardness, and globalism whenever the velvet hand that
feeds them punishes them with a throat punch instead.
donebydoug 11 hours ago
Journalists can't be spies, right? That would never happen.
Watt Supremacist 12 hours ago
Yes but do the people working for Reuters know all that?
nowhereman 11 hours ago
Just look at the signature on your paycheck.
Grumbleduke 11 hours ago
they're in the news business - of course they don't!
You know the adage "when your livelihood depends on not knowing" or something....
Enraged 10 hours ago
Listening in on calls is a distraction story by the propaganda media.
The real story is the blackmailing of politicians, judges, corporate executives, etc.
for many years by the intelligence agencies with tapes of them with underage girls and
boys. This was included in the Maxwell/Esptein story.
These people are compromised, which is the reason for the strange decisions they make,
as they support the globalist elite.
There is no reason to spy on journalists, as they are part of the intelligence agency
operations.
Max21c 10 hours ago (Edited)
There is no reason to spy on journalists, as they are part of the intelligence agency
operations.
True the press are either spies or puppets and vassals of Big Brother and the secret
police. They're all mostly agents of the Ministry of Truth. But sometimes they get the
weather report right.
Wayoutwilly 12 hours ago remove link
Bet they have sh!t on Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett too.
Brushy 11 hours ago
Wait a minute, you mean the tracking spy device that you carry around and put all of
your personal information on is actually tracking and spying on you?!!
Dis-obey 10 hours ago remove link
They have data on everyone but not enough eyes to look at everyone all the time. So when
you get flagged then they can open all the data on your device to investigate
u.
ay_arrow
Yog Soggoth 10 hours ago
Khashoggi was not a journalist. While interesting, this is not the story of the
year.
Lawn.Dart 10 hours ago
Almost every intellegence agent is a writer of some kind.
Max21c 10 hours ago
NOS is just one company out of many. They have the willing complicity of the security
services of other countries including the CIA, FBI, NSA, DOJ, in the USA and similar per
UK. Secret police use these special contractors to help them engage in crimes and criminal
activities and it does not matter whether the secret police use a foreign or domestic
secret police agency or contractor as they're all in on it together. It's just a criminal
underworld of secret police, secret police bureaus & agencies, and "intelligence"
agencies. They're all crooked. They're all crooks and criminals and thieves that rob and
persecute innocent civilians just like the Bolsheviks, Nazis, Gestapo, Waffen SS, Viet
Kong, Khmer Rouge, Red Guards, ISIS, Stasi, KGB, etc. It's all the same or similar secret
police, police state tactics, state security apparatus abuses of power, absolute power
& its abuses, and spy agencies and intelligence agencies... and those that go along
with it and collaborate. It's all just criminal enterprises and crime agencies.
So you can solve the 10,000 open murder investigations in Chicago with this. That's how
its being used right...
Bostwick9 10 hours ago
"We are deeply troubled to learn that two AP journalists, along with journalists from
many news organizations, are among those who may have been targeted by Pegasus spyware,"
said Director of AP Media Relations Lauren Easton.
OMG . Not journalists !!!!!!!!!!
Guess NSO is a "buy", then.
NAV 11 hours ago remove link
To believe that the Israelis will not use the information that they have is absurd.
Here's one example:
The American Anti-Defamation League under Abe Foxman long made it a practice for decades
to tail all Congressmen – liberal or conservative -- as was brought out in
allegations in the San Francisco trial of its head operative Roy Bullock on charges of
buying blackmail information from members of the San Francisco Police Department as
reported by the San Francisco Examiner. Bullock had collected information and provided it
to the ADL as a secretly-paid independent contractor for more than 32 years.
Can it be that there's a connection between data of this kind and the unbelievable
unification of almost every congressman behind every Israeli position?
Of course, the San Francisco Examiner no longer is in existence. But Israeli trolls
continue to gather like wasps upon meat to destroy any information that might reveal their
nefarious purposes.
In 1993 the FBI interviewed
40-year undercover ADL operative Roy Bullock , who had improperly obtained social
security numbers and drivers licenses from San Francisco Police Department officer Tom
Gerard. Gerard and Bullock infiltrated and obtained information on California
Pro-Palestinian and anti-Apartheid groups as paid agents of both the ADL and South
African intelligence services. The ADL paid tens of thousands in damages over the
incident and promised not to collect confidential information in the future.
SARC '
novictim 8 hours ago
What do you want to bet that Orange Hitler and associates along with MAGA Republicans,
their attorneys, friendly patriot reporters, etc, have had their phones widely hacked going
all the way back to 2016?
Because when you are a "progressive" in power, anyone who wants to unseat you is a
terrorist threat and you can do just about anything you want to them because you are saving
the world.
Sarrazin 8 hours ago
unseat you is a terrorist threat and you can do just about anything you want to them
because you are saving the world.
Funny, it's the same formula US foreign policy applies to all it's victims nations
around the world. Fighting terrorists in the name of saving the world.
LEEPERMAX 9 hours ago (Edited)
💥BOOM !!!
In 2020 alone, Facebook and Amazon spent more money on
lobbyists than did Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing -- major players
in the defense-industrial complex !!!
Let that sink in.
OldNewB 11 hours ago
"Journalists must be allowed to report the news in the public interest without fear of
harassment or harm, wherever they are."
This hasn't happened in ages. What the large majority of MSM operatives (so called
"journalists" ) convey to the public is propaganda and agenda driven misinformation and
disinformation.
SummerSausage PREMIUM 12 hours ago
Obama spying on Trump and Fox reporters - meh.
Same Obama intelligence services spying on WaPo & leftist reporters - FASCIST
Mute Button 11 hours ago
We're supposed to be outraged even though Trump & co. know they're being "spied"
on.
Its just a game of the uniparty.
Ivy Mike 8 hours ago
Yawn. Smart phones have swiss cheese security. Who knew.
If you have a secret that you really don't want people to know, don't put in on a device
that ever touches the internet. Don't talk about important stuff on a phone call. Any mob
boss from the 70's could tell you that.
MeLurkLongtime 5 hours ago
I would add if you have Alexa, don't converse on any sensitive topics in front of her,
either.
_0000_ 9 hours ago remove link
" Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow
operators of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including
secretly activate microphones and cameras."
This is a non-story. Lots of smoke, lots of brew-ha-ha.
Why is THIS a jaw dropping story now when the NSA/CIA have been doing this to ALL iOS
and Android devices years ago? RE: CALEA , signed into law in 1996 by Bill Clinton.
Just more misdirection... meant to distract from something else. What?
Rectify77 PREMIUM 10 hours ago
Isn't it odd that Iran, Russia and China are not on the map? Who are the Israelis
playing?
NAV 10 hours ago
Isn't is amazing that Russia is giving asylum to Edward Snowden who will be arrested and
inflicted with only God knows what if captured by the USA?
Market Pulse 13 hours ago
And we are surprised, why??? Everyone's phones are spied upon with all the data
collected. All part and parcel of the NWO and the "Information Age". How else are they
going to get all that information to control everything. And just think, once upon a time,
there were no cell phones and the people were fine. They also were happier and much more
free. Hint - ditch the phone!
dog breath 4 hours ago
Hello? This stuff has been going on for two decades. Bill Binney, former NSA, been
talking about this since after 911. Five eyes is a way over going around internal rules.
Every country does this. Russia, China, EU, USA, Australia, etc. are all spying on their
own citizens. This world is turning into a corrupt crap pile and I'm waiting for the Lord
to come.
Update (2130ET): Tucker Carlson responded to today's 'unmasking' - namely an Axios report
which accuses him of trying to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I'm an American citizen, I can interview whoever I want - and plan to," said the Fox News
host.
Presented without further comment, along with Carlson's sit-down with journalist Glenn
Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden revelations about domestic spying and other illicit
activities conducted by the US government.
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a bombshell broadcast that an NSA
whistleblower had approached him with evidence that the National Security Agency
has been spying on his communications , with the intent to leak his emails to the press and
'take this show off the air.'
Today, Carlson told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that the emails have in fact been leaked
to journalists - at least one of whom has contacted him for what we presume is an upcoming
article on their contents.
"I was in Washington for a funeral last week and ran into someone I know well, who said '
I have a message for you ,' and then proceeded to repeat back to me details from emails and
texts that I sent, and had told no one else about. So it was verified. And the person said
'the NSA has this,' and that was proven by the person reading back the contents of the email,
'and they're going to use it against you.'
To be blunt with you, it was something I would have never said in public if it was wrong,
or illegal, or immoral. They don't actually have anything on me, but they do have my emails.
So I knew they were spying on me, and again, to be totally blunt with you - as a defensive
move, I thought 'I better say this out loud.'"
"Then, yesterday, I learned that - and this is going to come out soon - that the NSA
leaked the contents of my email to journalists in an effort to discredit me. I know, because
I got a call from one of them who said 'this is what your email was about.'
So, it is not in any way a figment of my imagination. It's confirmed. It's true. They
aren't allowed to spy on American citizens - they are. I think more ominously, they're using
the information they gather to put leverage and to threaten opposition journalists, people
who criticize the Biden administration. It's happening to me right now..."
" This is the stuff of banana republics and third-world countries ," replied Bartiromo.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is the front-runner so far for 2021's bad timing prize. The
Justice Department last month rushed out a lawsuit claiming that Georgia's new election law
violates Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act only days before the Supreme Court laid down
standards that make the lawsuit a nearly certain loser.
Justice knew the likely timing of the Court's ruling in Brnovich v. DNC, so a fair guess is
that Mr. Garland succumbed to White House and progressive pressure to make a political
statement to support Democratic efforts in Congress to federalize state election laws in
H.R.1.
Bad call. Now federal judges hearing the case will have to contend with Justice Samuel
Alito's five principles in Brnovich as they assess the Georgia statute.
It won't be easy to find legal fault under those principles. Mere voting inconvenience can't
be considered disqualifying, since all voting imposes some inconvenience. Any specific voting
provision, such as the number of drop boxes, must also be considered in the overall context of
a state's voting rules. Georgia's rules are generally lenient and don't especially burden the
ability of minorities to vote.
Perhaps Justice can find a federal judge somewhere to rule against Georgia, but such a
ruling is unlikely to survive on appeal to higher courts. The legal and political result of the
lawsuit is therefore likely to vindicate Georgia Republicans during the 2022 election season or
leading up to 2024, depending on how the lawsuits proceed. Mr. Garland would be wise to drop
the suit in light of Brnovich, lest his term at Justice be marred by the continuation of this
patently political lawsuit.
Given what we have seen of Mr. Garland thus far in his questionable legal performance as AG,
it is looking like the Republicans were prescient in blocking his appointment to the Supreme
Court.
David Schmidt
Politics will always supersede good judgment.
DON WILLINGHAM
Yep, apparently its a burden for some of the libs to put a stamp on an ballot and mail it it
(I'm going one step beyond the extraordinary burden of getting off your behind to go to a
local polling location).
paul grunder
Looks like Coca Cola and Major L. baseball made a mistake. do you think they will have second
thoughts about leaving GA.? I know I now love Pepsi and don't watch baseball much at all
anymore. You can bet someone in each organization is saying, how do we save face over this.
p's wife
Brien Akers
None of this matters. Not lawsuits, not SCOTUS rulings, not State election laws, not lower
court rulings. None of it matters. Why? Because the Democrats know that they cannot win
without cheating as surely as they know the sun is going to rise tomorrow. That means they
will simply ignore all the laws and do they same thing in 2024 that they did in 2020. Ask
yourself this: Who's going to stop them? Question number two: Who will reverse the election
results?
DON WILLINGHAM
Tell us what citizen cannot vote in the next election? (no, felons don't count). Its not
hard to vote. Besides, where were all the whiners 4 years ago, 8 years, 20 years ago if GA's
laws were so restrictive. This is such nonsense.
Greg Elsden
I say keep going, Garland. Your party is known for epic fails (eg Russian Delusion and two
impeachments).
Steven S
The chances of DoJ voluntarily dismissing its lawsuit against Georgia's
more-lax-and-liberal-than-Delaware's voting regulations are somewhere between slim and none.
And Slim has left town.
Litigation of this kind takes years to wind its way through the lower courts and to reach
SCOTUS. By then, the Supreme Court could be packed with Justices of the same mindset as the
dissenters in Brnovich.
Only the "Jim Crow" Filibuster stands in the way of court packing.
David Alan
Another reminder that we dodged a bullet by not sending Merrick Garland through to
SCOTUS.
Robert Bridges
Amen to that. He isn't a moderate after all...
Jim Walsh
Democrats need the issue so that they can continue to use minorities, who they truly think
are too stupid to vote. It is insulting and stupid,
James Stock
Garland is really just a bureaucrat with a law degree. Deep down, he doesn't believe is this
ridiculous lawsuit. He made a deal with the devil by working for an incompetent president.
So even in 1971 corporate American understood usefulness of critical race theory and "black
bolshevism" for their needs. Otherwise Bell would never get a tenure in Harvard -- the bastion of
neoliberalism and corporatism.
As the theory is a typical pseudoscience in the best style of Academician Lysenko, it is
natural that " Far more Americans have learned about critical race theory from its opponents
than from the theorists themselves."
The idea that "struggle for racial equality is worthwhile even though it will never succeed."
remiinds me Eduard Bernstein's "movement toward goal is everything; goal is nothing" see
Eduard Bernstein's
Revisionist Critique of Marxist Theory and Practice Bernstein was a member of the German
Social Democratic party which was a particularly strong and important member of the Second
International conference. Bernstein's thoughts are encapsulated in his book, Evolutionary
Socialism, published in 1899.
Notable quotes:
"... ...Far more Americans have learned about critical race theory from its opponents than from the theorists themselves. ..."
"... The political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr., whose work focuses on race and inequality, wrote about a conference he attended at Harvard Law School in 1991, where "I heard the late, esteemed legal theorist, Derrick Bell, declare on a panel that blacks had made no progress since 1865. I was startled not least because Bell's own life, as well as the fact that Harvard's black law students' organization put on the conference, so emphatically belied his claim." Mr. Reed dismissed the idea as "more a jeremiad than an analysis." ..."
"... Like the French existentialist Albert Camus, who saw Sisyphus's eternal effort to roll a boulder uphill as a symbol of human endurance in an absurd world, Bell demands "recognition of the futility of action" while insisting "that action must be taken." ..."
"... To the journalist and historian James Traub, who profiled Bell for the New Republic magazine in 1993, this amounted to a recipe for paralysis: "If you convince whites that their racism is ineradicable, what are they supposed to do? And what are blacks to do with their hard-won victim status?" ..."
In their book "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," Mr. Delgado and Jean Stefancic list
several of its core premises, including the view that "racism is ordinary, not aberrational,"
and that it "serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group,"
that is, for white people. In recent years, these ideas have entered the mainstream thanks to
the advocacy of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was catalyzed by several high-profile
cases of police violence against Black people, as well as the New York Times's 1619 Project and
bestselling books like Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility" and Ibram X. Kendi's "How to Be an
Antiracist." Critical race theory also informs instruction at some schools and other
institutions.
...Far more Americans have learned about critical race theory from its opponents than
from the theorists themselves. That may be inevitable, since their writing was mostly
aimed at other scholars. But at least one major work is more accessible: "Faces at the Bottom
of the Well," the 1992 book by Derrick Bell, who is often described as the founder or godfather
of critical race theory.
Bell died in 2011, but the response to his work foreshadows today's controversies. In
"Faces," he blends the genres of fiction and essay to communicate his powerfully pessimistic
sense of "the permanence of racism" -- the book's subtitle. Bell's thought has been an
important influence on some of today's most influential writers on race, such as Ta-Nehisi
Coates and Michelle Alexander.
Derrick Bell was born in Pittsburgh in 1930, and after serving in the Air Force he went to
work as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Eisenhower Justice Department. He left
the job in 1959 after being told that he had to resign his membership in the NAACP to avoid
compromising his objectivity. That experience reflects a major theme in Bell's work: Can
traditional legal standards of objectivity and neutrality lead to justice for Black Americans,
or does fighting racism require a more politically engaged, results-oriented approach to the
law?
In 1971, Bell became the first Black professor to receive tenure at Harvard Law School. As
he writes in "Faces," "When I agreed to become Harvard's first black faculty member I did so on
the express commitment that I was to be the first, but not the last, black hired. I was to be
the pioneer, the trailblazer." But the school was slow to hire more Black faculty, leading Bell
to leave in protest in 1990. He ended up spending the last part of his career at NYU Law
School.
... ... ...
The political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr., whose work focuses on race and inequality,
wrote about a conference he attended at Harvard Law School in 1991, where "I heard the late,
esteemed legal theorist, Derrick Bell, declare on a panel that blacks had made no progress
since 1865. I was startled not least because Bell's own life, as well as the fact that
Harvard's black law students' organization put on the conference, so emphatically belied his
claim." Mr. Reed dismissed the idea as "more a jeremiad than an analysis."
In the conclusion to "Faces," Bell argues that the struggle for racial equality is
worthwhile even though it will never succeed. Like the French existentialist Albert Camus,
who saw Sisyphus's eternal effort to roll a boulder uphill as a symbol of human endurance in an
absurd world, Bell demands "recognition of the futility of action" while insisting "that action
must be taken."
To the journalist and historian James Traub, who profiled Bell for the New Republic
magazine in 1993, this amounted to a recipe for paralysis: "If you convince whites that their
racism is ineradicable, what are they supposed to do? And what are blacks to do with their
hard-won victim status?"
... ... ...
These experiences inform "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," which is made up of nine fables,
some with a science-fiction twist. In one story, a new continent emerges in the Atlantic Ocean,
with an atmosphere that only African-Americans can breathe. In another, the U.S. institutes a
system where whites can pay for permission to discriminate against Blacks -- a kind of
cap-and-trade scheme for bigotry.
"... He defines "wokeism" as a creed that has arisen in America in response to the "moral vacuum" created by the ebbing from public life of faith, patriotism and "the identity we derived from hard work." He argues that notions like "diversity," "equity," "inclusion" and "sustainability" have come to take their place. ..."
"... "Our collective moral insecurities," Mr. Ramaswamy says, "have left us vulnerable" to the blandishments and propaganda of the new political and corporate elites, who are now locked in a cynical "arranged marriage, where each partner has contempt for the other." Each side is getting out of the "trade" something it "could not have gotten alone." ..."
"... Wokeness entered its union with capitalism in the years following the 2008 financial panic and recession. Mr. Ramaswamy believes that conditions were perfect for the match. "We were -- and are -- in the midst of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in history," he says. Barack Obama had just been elected the first black president. By the end of the crisis, Americans "were actually pretty jaded with respect to capitalism. Corporations were the bad guys. The old left wanted to take money from corporations and give it to poor people." ..."
"... The birth of wokeism was a godsend to corporations, Mr. Ramaswamy says. It helped defang the left. "Wokeism lent a lifeline to the people who were in charge of the big banks. They thought, 'This stuff is easy!' " They applauded diversity and inclusion, appointed token female and minority directors, and "mused about the racially disparate impact of climate change." So, in Mr. Ramaswamy's narrative, "a bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials, birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption." Now, in Mr. Ramaswamy's tart verdict, "big business makes money by critiquing itself." ..."
"... Davos is "the Woke Vatican," Mr. Ramaswamy says; Al Gore and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock , are "its archbishops." CEOs "further down the chain" -- he mentions James Quincey of Coca-Cola , Ed Bastian of Delta , Marc Benioff of Salesforce , John Donahoe of Nike and Alan Jope of Unilever -- are its "cardinals." ..."
"... He describes this sort of corporate imposition -- "a market force supplanting open political debate to settle the essence of political questions" -- as one of the "defining challenges" America faces today. "If democracy means anything," he adds, "it means living in a one-person-one-vote system, not a one-dollar-one-vote system." Voters' voices "are unadjusted by the number of dollars we wield in the marketplace." Open debate in the public square is "our uniquely American mechanism" of settling political questions. He likens the woke-corporate silencing of debate as akin to the "old-world European model, where a small group of elites gets in a room and decides what's good for everyone else." ..."
"... The wokeism-capitalism embrace, Mr. Ramaswamy says, was replicated in Silicon Valley. Over the past few years, "Big Tech effectively agreed to censor -- or 'moderate' -- content that the woke movement didn't like. But they didn't do it for free." In return, the left "agreed to look the other way when it comes to leaving Silicon Valley's monopoly power intact." This arrangement is "working out masterfully" for both sides. ..."
"... Coca-Cola follows the same playbook, he says: "It's easier for them to issue statements about voting laws in Georgia, or to train their employees on how to 'be less white,' than it is to publicly reckon with its role in fueling a nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity -- including in the black communities they profess to care about so much." (In a statement, Coca-Cola apologized for the "be less white" admonition and said that while it was "accessible through our company training platform," it "was not a part of our training curriculum.") ..."
"... Nike finds it much easier to write checks to Black Lives Matter and condemn America's history of slavery, Mr. Ramaswamy says, even as it relies on "slave labor" today to sell "$250 sneakers to black kids in the inner city who can't afford to buy books for school." All the while, Black Lives Matter "neuters the police in a way that sacrifices even more black lives." (Nike has said in a statement that its code of conduct prohibits any use of forced labor and "we have been engaging with multi-stakeholder working groups to assess collective solutions that will help preserve the integrity of our global supply chains.") ..."
"... Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute. ..."
"... Seems to me in a nutshell he is saying that these woke corporations are all hypocrites. No surprise there hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of the woke left and you need to assume that characteristic yourself to be able to work within their bounds. ..."
"... Wokeists argue that theirs is not a religion because it doesn't center on a transcendent being. I see Wokeism as a religion that gathers multiple Secularist sects into a big tent. These sects include Environmentalism, Genderism, Anti-Racism, and more. ..."
"... One thing all religions share in common is the elevation of questionable premises to unassailable truths which they defend with religious zeal. Some questionable premises elevated to unassailable truths by Wokeism are that humans are making the Earth uninhabitable, gender is an individual choice, and race is the most important human characteristic. There are more. ..."
A self-made multimillionaire who founded a biotech company at 28, Vivek Ramaswamy is every
inch the precocious overachiever. He tells me he attended law school while he was in sixth
grade. He's joking, in his own earnest manner. His father, an aircraft engineer at General
Electric, had decided to get a law degree at night school. Vivek sat in on the classes with
him, so he could keep his dad company on the long car rides to campus and back -- a very Indian
filial act.
"I was probably the only person my age who'd heard of Antonin Scalia, " Mr. Ramaswamy, 35,
says in a Zoom call from his home in West Chester, Ohio. His father, a political liberal, would
often rage on the way home from class about "some Scalia opinion." Mr. Ramaswamy reckons that
this was when he began to form his own political ideas. A libertarian in high school, he
switched to being conservative at Harvard in "an act of rebellion" against the politics he
found there. That conservatism drove him to step down in January as CEO at Roivant Sciences --
the drug-development company that made him rich -- and write "Woke, Inc," a book that takes a
scathing look at "corporate America's social-justice scam." (It will be published in
August.)
Mr. Ramaswamy recently watched the movie "Spotlight," which tells the story of how reporters
at the Boston Globe exposed misconduct (specifically, sexual abuse) by Catholic priests in the
early 2000s. "My goal in 'Woke, Inc.' is to do the same thing with respect to the Church of
Wokeism." He defines "wokeism" as a creed that has arisen in America in response to the "moral
vacuum" created by the ebbing from public life of faith, patriotism and "the identity we
derived from hard work." He argues that notions like "diversity," "equity," "inclusion" and
"sustainability" have come to take their place.
"Our collective moral insecurities," Mr. Ramaswamy says, "have left us vulnerable" to the
blandishments and propaganda of the new political and corporate elites, who are now locked in a
cynical "arranged marriage, where each partner has contempt for the other." Each side is
getting out of the "trade" something it "could not have gotten alone."
Wokeness entered its union with capitalism in the years following the 2008 financial panic
and recession. Mr. Ramaswamy believes that conditions were perfect for the match. "We were --
and are -- in the midst of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in history," he says.
Barack Obama had just been elected the first black president. By the end of the crisis,
Americans "were actually pretty jaded with respect to capitalism. Corporations were the bad
guys. The old left wanted to take money from corporations and give it to poor people."
The birth of wokeism was a godsend to corporations, Mr. Ramaswamy says. It helped defang the
left. "Wokeism lent a lifeline to the people who were in charge of the big banks. They thought,
'This stuff is easy!' " They applauded diversity and inclusion, appointed token female and
minority directors, and "mused about the racially disparate impact of climate change." So, in
Mr. Ramaswamy's narrative, "a bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials,
birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption." Now, in Mr.
Ramaswamy's tart verdict, "big business makes money by critiquing itself."
Mr. Ramaswamy regards Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, as the "patron saint of wokeism" for his relentless propagation of "stakeholder
capitalism" -- the view that the unspoken bargain in the grant to corporations of limited
liability is that they "must do social good on the side."
Davos is "the Woke Vatican," Mr. Ramaswamy says; Al Gore and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock , are "its
archbishops." CEOs "further down the chain" -- he mentions James Quincey of Coca-Cola , Ed Bastian of Delta , Marc Benioff of
Salesforce , John
Donahoe of Nike and
Alan Jope of Unilever
-- are its "cardinals."
Mr. Ramaswamy says that "unlike the investigative 'Spotlight' team at the Boston Globe, I'm
a whistleblower, not a journalist. But the church analogy holds strong." He paraphrases a line
in the movie: "It takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one. In
the case of my book, the child I'm concerned about is American democracy."
In league with the woke left, corporate America "uses force" as a substitute for open
deliberation and debate, Mr. Ramaswamy says. "There's the sustainability accounting standards
board of BlackRock, which effectively demands that in order to win an investment from
BlackRock, the largest asset-manager in the world, you must abide by the standards of that
board."
Was the board put in place by the owners of the trillions of dollars of capital that Mr.
Fink manages? Of course not, Mr. Ramaswamy says. "And yet he's actually using his seat of
corporate power to sidestep debate about questions like environmentalism or diversity on
boards."
The irrepressible Mr. Ramaswamy presses on with another example. Goldman Sachs , he says with obvious relish,
"is a very Davos-fitting example." At the 2020 World Economic Forum, Goldman Sachs CEO David
Solomon "issued an edict from the mountaintops of Davos." Mr. Solomon announced his company
would refuse to take a company public if its board wasn't sufficiently diverse. "So Goldman
gets to define what counts as 'diverse,' " Mr. Ramaswamy says. "No doubt, they're referring to
skin-deep, genetically inherited attributes."
He describes this sort of corporate imposition -- "a market force supplanting open political
debate to settle the essence of political questions" -- as one of the "defining challenges"
America faces today. "If democracy means anything," he adds, "it means living in a
one-person-one-vote system, not a one-dollar-one-vote system." Voters' voices "are unadjusted
by the number of dollars we wield in the marketplace." Open debate in the public square is "our
uniquely American mechanism" of settling political questions. He likens the woke-corporate
silencing of debate as akin to the "old-world European model, where a small group of elites
gets in a room and decides what's good for everyone else."
The wokeism-capitalism embrace, Mr. Ramaswamy says, was replicated in Silicon Valley. Over
the past few years, "Big Tech effectively agreed to censor -- or 'moderate' -- content that the
woke movement didn't like. But they didn't do it for free." In return, the left "agreed to look
the other way when it comes to leaving Silicon Valley's monopoly power intact." This
arrangement is "working out masterfully" for both sides.
The rest of corporate America appears to be following suit. "There's a Big Pharma version,
too," Mr. Ramaswamy says. "Big Pharma had an epiphany in dealing with the left." It couldn't
beat them, so it joined them. "Rather than win the debate on drug pricing, they decided to just
change the subject instead. Who needs to win a debate if you can just avoid having it?" So we
see "big-time pharma CEOs musing about topics like racial justice and environmentalism, and
writing multibillion-dollar checks to fight climate change, while taking price hikes that
they'd previously paused when the public was angry about drug pricing."
Coca-Cola follows the same playbook, he says: "It's easier for them to issue statements
about voting laws in Georgia, or to train their employees on how to 'be less white,' than it is
to publicly reckon with its role in fueling a nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity --
including in the black communities they profess to care about so much." (In a statement,
Coca-Cola apologized
for the "be less white" admonition and said that while it was "accessible through our company
training platform," it "was not a part of our training curriculum.")
Nike finds it much easier to write checks to Black Lives Matter and condemn America's
history of slavery, Mr. Ramaswamy says, even as it relies on "slave labor" today to sell "$250
sneakers to black kids in the inner city who can't afford to buy books for school." All the
while, Black Lives Matter "neuters the police in a way that sacrifices even more black lives."
(Nike has said in a statement that its code of conduct prohibits any use of forced labor and
"we have been engaging with multi-stakeholder working groups to assess collective solutions
that will help preserve the integrity of our global supply chains.")
... ... ...
Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
and at New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute.
Rod Drake 53 minutes ago
Seems to me in a nutshell he is saying that these woke corporations are all hypocrites. No
surprise there hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of the woke left and you need to assume
that characteristic yourself to be able to work within their bounds.
In addition, I have been
saying for some time discrimination based on political belief desperately needs to be
included as a prohibited basis. Where are the Republicans, while the greatest civil rights
violation of our time is going on right under their noses?
Terry Overbey 1 hour ago
I love reading stories about people who are willing to take on the woke political class. For
most people, even if they strongly disagree, their only option is to bite their tongue and go
along. People aren't stupid. If you buck the system, you don't get promoted, you don't get
good grades, you don't get into elite schools, you don't get the government job.
Thank you Mr Ramaswany.
James Ransom 1 hour ago
Well. If nothing else, he just sold me a book. I think we should say that "Wokeism" tries to
"Act Like" a religion, not that it is one. Because of this fakery, we do not need to give it
"freedom" in the sense that we have "Freedom of Religion."
These misguided Americans perhaps need to be exposed to a real religion. Christianity and
Buddhism would be good choices; I don't know about Hinduism, but my point is that "Wokeism"
is more like a mental disorder. We should feel sorry for its victims, offer them treatment,
but not let them run anything.
marc goodman 1 hour ago
Wokeists argue that theirs is not a religion because it doesn't center on a transcendent
being. I see Wokeism as a religion that gathers multiple Secularist sects into a big tent.
These sects include Environmentalism, Genderism, Anti-Racism, and more.
One thing all religions share in common is the elevation of questionable premises to
unassailable truths which they defend with religious zeal. Some questionable premises
elevated to unassailable truths by Wokeism are that humans are making the Earth
uninhabitable, gender is an individual choice, and race is the most important human
characteristic. There are more.
Humans need to believe in something greater than themselves. We fulfill this need with
religion, and historically, the "greater something" has been a transcendent being. Wokeism
fulfills this need for its adherents but without a transcendent being. Ultimately, Wokeism
will fail as a religion because it can't nourish the soul like the belief in a transcendent
being does.
Grodney Ross 2 hours ago (Edited)
Judgement will be passed in November of 2022. I don't see this as a Democrat vs Republican
issue. I think it's a matter of who is paying attention vs. those who are not. We live in a
society where, generally, the most strident voices are on the left, along with the most
judgmental voices. When the "wokeless" engage in a manner that conflicts with views of the
woke, they are attacked, be you from the left or the right, so you keep your mouth shut and go
about your day.
I believe that this coming election will give voice to those who are fatigued and fed up
with the progressive lefts venom and vitriol. If not, we will survive, but without a meaningful
first amendment,14th amendment, or 2nd amendment.
Barbara Helton 2 hours ago (Edited)
Being woke, when practiced by the wealthy and influential, can be extremely similar to
bullying.
Johnson &
Johnson has agreed to pay $230 million to the state of New York to resolve an opioid
lawsuit slated to go to trial Tuesday, as negotiations intensify with the company and three
drug distributors to clinch a
$26 billion settlement of thousands of other lawsuits blaming the pharmaceutical industry
for the opioid crisis.
Johnson & Johnson's New York deal removes it from a coming trial on Long Island but not
from the rest of the cases it faces nationwide, including a continuing trial in California. The
New York settlement includes an additional $33 million in attorney fees and costs and calls for
the drugmaker to no longer sell opioids nationwide, something Johnson & Johnson said it
already stopped doing.
States have been trying to re-create with the opioid litigation what they accomplished with
tobacco companies in the 1990s, when $206 billion in settlements flowed into state coffers.
More than 3,000 counties, cities and other local governments have also pursued lawsuits over
the opioid crisis,
complicating talks that have dragged on since late 2019 and that have been slowed down by
the Covid-19 pandemic.
Having been caught delivering some fact-base 'science' that does not
jibe with the establishment's message that all kids should be jabbed immediately, The WHO has
rapidly 'adjusted' its science-based recommendations for whether children should get
vaccinated... or not...
Gone is the big headline - "Children should not be vaccinated for the moment."
The new guidance is as follows: (emphasis ours... in case you are confused by their
guidance)
Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults, so unless they
are part of a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them
than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers.
More evidence is needed on the use of the different COVID-19 vaccines in children to be
able to make general recommendations on vaccinating children against COVID-19.
WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) has concluded that the Pfizer/BionTech
vaccine is suitable for use by people aged 12 years and above. Children aged between 12 and
15 who are at high risk may be offered this vaccine alongside other priority groups for
vaccination.
Vaccine trials for children are ongoing and WHO will update its recommendations when the
evidence or epidemiological situation warrants a change in policy.
So to clarify... children aren't really at risk of this virus so no hurry on the jab... more
evidence is needed on its usefulness in kids... oh but the Pfizer vax is suitable?
So is there evidence or not? Is the vaccine worthwhile for kids? If you have to ask, you
aren't following the science.
Color us not entirely surprised at this farce... but one thing we are sure of, this will
simply be dismissed as a coincidence and WHO had planned on adjusting its guidance the whole
time (it was just waiting to get caught in a disagreement with Fauci and friends).
* * *
As The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity's Adam Dick noted yesterday, in
America, national, state, and local governments are pulling out all the stops to advance giving
experimental coronavirus shots to children down to the age of 12.
Up next, babies and children up to age 11.
The shots are "safe and effective," the propagandists proclaim.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a different approach. The WHO says do not
vaccinate children, at least not yet.
At its website, the WHO offers this advice regarding giving experimental coronavirus
vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, to
children:
Children should not be vaccinated for the moment. There is not yet enough evidence on the
use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be
vaccinated against COVID-19.
Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults.
However, children should continue to have the recommended childhood vaccines.
Choose accordingly.
Kugelhagel 18 hours ago
Conspiracy theorist = heretic ... they couldn't use that word anymore, because everyone
would understand that this is about silencing the truth.
Ride_the_kali_yuga 17 hours ago
Nice analogy.
JimmyJones 17 hours ago remove link
Yep, women with their periods messed up, their babies allergic to their breast milk,
young people with heart inflammation, people having partial paralyzed limbs. I know there's
more.
We don't even know what 6-12 months has in-store or 1-2 years.
Alice-the-dog 13 hours ago
I'm always on the look out for new conspiracy theories, because my old ones all turned
out to be accurate.
It was a brilliant psyop by the CIA to invent the term to cover up the murder of JFK.
But if one takes a cursory look at it, how is a conspiracy ever to be exposed without a
theory that there is one? If every time someone proposes a theory regarding this or that
possible conspiracy, they are swept into the kook dust bin, how will any conspiracy ever be
exposed? Hence they aren't, unless iron clad evidence of their existence is encompassed by
the theory.
WarrenLiz 15 hours ago
Over 15,472 dead from Jab in 27 EU countries, about half of Europe's 50 countries.
The EudraVigilance database reports that through June 19, 2021 there are 15,472 deaths
and 1,509,266 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19
shots:
...Too many people are stuck in normalcy bias and are too trusting of the modern elite
class. You don't have to look back very far to see the unspeakable atrocities powerful
people are willing and able to commit.
Ride_the_kali_yuga 17 hours ago (Edited) remove link
My guess was depopulation due to lower EROIE on petroleum. Deathcross of the fossil
energy (oil) available was near to us, maybe we already are behind peak oil. Eolians, solar
panels and EV are an energical leftist joke and will never be an alternative to nuclear/
charchoal power plants and thermic motors.
I was thinking about it for quite some time. Why all this Covidian Cult was necessary
for? What does it produce? Lockdowns was a main response worldwide.
Was it usefull? absolutely not. No more planes in the sky, economic slowdown, a lot less
of enegy used . I guess this sanitary madness was all about cheap energy we can get from
oil. The human population exploded due to the industrial revolution, the machines, their
capacities and -in fine- oil made it possible. If you do not have enough cheap oil and the
EROIE is way to high, then the industrial technology we live in can no longer be.
The Covidian Cult produced what an energy crisis would have made...
The_Dude 16 hours ago
Evil is narcissism run amok...
Rose Marie PREMIUM 15 hours ago
Intelligence without wisdom. Always looking at what, how, when, where, but no interest
in asking why. Running thought processes without examining the meaning.
uncle_duke 18 hours ago remove link
An age of unlimited information, and a population too dumb and lazy to do anything with
it. Reality has become Pythonian.
DAVOS-19 14 hours ago
Not so fast. Remember, they lie, probably also about history.
Now Voyager 14 hours ago
What happens when you stop natural selection and substitute unnatural selection.
Ride_the_kali_yuga 13 hours ago
Yeah, the gene pool is over crowded with genetics defects. See diabetics, i mean
"genetical" ones since a young age. Insuline was a great discovery, it saves a lot of
people at some point. Then without the natural selection they had kids of their own and has
a consequence they spread their genetic defect in the gene pool. Sometimes great inventions
make unintended results.
Diseases are a way for nature to get rid of the olders and the weak. It is not moral,
there is no justice in this, this is just the way nature works. Human tried damn hard to
break nature's law, the thing is, there is consequences playing god.
There's a growing cottage industry at the nexus of consumer research and government
surveillance.
In a report published Friday, the Wall Street Journal explored the world of Premise Data
Corp., an innocently-named firm that uses a network of users, many in the developing world, who
complete basic tasks for small commissions. Assignments can range from snapping photos of
competitors' stores, to counting the number of ATMs in a given area, to reporting on the price
of consumer goods on the shelf.
Roughly half of the firm's clients are private businesses seeking "commercial information"
(mostly reporting on competitors' operations), both the US government and foreign governments
have hired the firm to do more advanced reconnaissance work while gauging public opinion.
According to
WSJ , Premise is one of a growing number of companies that are straddling "the divide
between consumer services and government surveillance and rely on the proliferation of mobile
phones as a way to turn billions of devices into sensors that gather open-source information
useful to government security services."
Premise's CEO even hinted that the company had been tapped by foreign governments to help
with setting policy about how to deal with "vaccine hesitancy".
"Data gained from our contributors helped inform government policy makers on how to best
deal with vaccine hesitancy, susceptibility to foreign interference and misinformation in
elections, as well as the location and nature of gang activity in Honduras," Premise Chief
Executive Officer Maury Blackman said. The company declined to name its clients, citing
confidentiality.
Premise launched in 2013 as a tool meant to gather data for use in international development
work by governments and non-governmental organizations. In recent years, it has also forged
ties to the American national-security establishment and highlighted its capability to serve as
a surveillance tool, according to documents and interviews with former employees. As of 2019,
the company's marketing materials said it has 600K contributors operating in 43 countries,
including global hot spots such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.
Federal records show Premise has received at least $5MM in payouts from the government since
2017 on military projects -- including from contracts with the Air Force and the Army and as a
subcontractor to other defense entities. The company's key utility was, again, gathering
information: It would use civilian users in Afghanistan and elsewhere to map out "key social
structures such as mosques, banks and internet cafes; and covertly monitoring cell-tower and
Wi-Fi signals in a 100-square kilometer area."
In a presentation prepared last year for the Combined Joint Special Operations Task
Force-Aghanistan, Premise shared some details about its global operation which showed that it's
mostly active outside the US.
It also showed how its "users" stationed around Kabul helped it collect data that are
valuable to the US and Afghan military.
As the WSJ explained, data from Wi-Fi networks, cell towers and mobile devices could be
valuable to the military for "situational awareness, target tracking and other intelligence
purposes."
There is also tracking potential in having a distributed network of phones acting as
sensors, and knowing the signal strength of nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi access points can be
useful when trying to jam communications during military operations.
Users of Premise's data-collection app typically aren't told for whom they are truly
working. This is all laid out in its privacy policy, of course. The app currently assigns about
five "tasks" per day to its active users in Afghanistan.
When
WSJ caught up with Afghani users of the app, they were told that the users were typically
paid about 25 cents per task (about 20 Afghani). And that lately, some of the tasks had struck
him as "potentially concerning." Premises claims that none of its users have ever been harmed
while completing tasks.
In this way, many of the app's users are effectively being used as unwitting spies for the
military.
But it's just one more thing to look out for. Next time you're traveling abroad and you see
somebody taking a photo of a mosque or a bank, just remember, it might be part of an officially
sanctioned intelligence operation.
In the later years of an abusive relationship I was in, my abuser had become so confident in
how mentally caged he had me that he'd start overtly telling me what he is and what he was
doing. He flat-out told me he was a sociopath and a manipulator, trusting that I was so
submitted to his will by that point that I'd gaslight myself into reframing those statements in
a sympathetic light. Toward the end one time he told me "I am going to rape you," and then he
did, and then he talked about it to some friends trusting that I'd run perception management on
it for him.
The better he got at psychologically twisting me up in knots and the more submitted I
became, the more open he'd be about it. He seemed to enjoy doing this, taking a kind of
exhibitionistic delight in showing off his accomplishments at crushing me as a person, both to
others and to me. Like it was his art, and he wanted it to have an audience to appreciate
it.
I was reminded of this while watching a recent Fox News appearance by Glenn Greenwald where he
made an observation we've discussed here
previously about the way the CIA used to have to infiltrate the media, but now just openly
has US intelligence veterans in mainstream media punditry positions managing public
perception.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/jU58mrEpPvU
"If you go and Google, and I hope your viewers do, Operation Mockingbird, what you will
find is that during the Cold War these agencies used to plot how to clandestinely manipulate
the news media to disseminate propaganda to the American population," Greenwald
said .
"They used to try to do it secretly. They don't even do it secretly anymore. They don't
need Operation Mockingbird. They literally put John Brennan who works for NBC and James
Clapper who works for CNN and tons of FBI agents right on the payroll of these news
organizations. They now shape the news openly to manipulate and to deceive the American
population."
In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled " The CIA and the Media " reporting
that the CIA had
covertly infiltrated America's most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who
it considered assets in a program known as
Operation Mockingbird . It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to
report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the
agendas of spooks and warmongers.
Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and the public is too
brainwashed and gaslit to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like
The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news
pundits . The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor ,
and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence
agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets
now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper,
Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha
Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash,
Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known
CIA assets like NBC's Ken Dilanian, as are
CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like
Tucker Carlson.
They're just rubbing it in our faces now. Like they're showing off.
And that's just the media. We also see this flaunting behavior exhibited in the US
government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a propaganda operation geared at
sabotaging foreign governments not aligned with the US which according to its own founding
officials was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. The late author and
commentator William Blum
makes this clear :
[I]n 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up to "support democratic
institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts". Notice the
"nongovernmental"" part of the image, part of the myth. In actuality, virtually every penny
of its funding comes from the federal government, as is clearly indicated in the financial
statement in each issue of its annual report. NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO
(Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad
that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a
GO.
"We should not have to do this kind of work covertly," said Carl Gershman in 1986, while
he was president of the Endowment. "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the
world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in the 60's, and that's why it has
been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that's why the endowment
was created."
And Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991:
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
In effect, the CIA has been laundering money through NED.
We see NED's fingerprints all over pretty much any situation where the western power
alliance needs to manage public perception about a CIA-targeted government, from Russia to
Hong
Kong to Xinjiang to the
imperial propaganda operation known as Bellingcat.
Hell, intelligence insiders are just openly running for office now. In an article titled "
The CIA
Democrats in the 2020 elections ", World Socialist Website documented the many veterans of
the US intelligence cartel who ran in elections across America in 2018 and 2020:
"In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence
operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination
in 50 congressional seats" nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting
Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements. Some 30 of these
candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018
election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one quarter of the 40 previously
Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of
Representatives. In 2020, the intervention of the CIA Democrats continues on what is arguably
an equally significant scale."
So they're just getting more and more brazen the more confident they feel about how
propaganda-addled and submissive the population has become. They're laying more and more of
their cards on the table. Soon the CIA will just be openly selling narcotics door to door like
Girl Scout cookies.
Or maybe not. I said my ex got more and more overt about his abuses in the later years of
our relationship because those were the later years. I did eventually expand my own
consciousness of my own inner workings enough to clear the fears and unexamined beliefs I had
that he was using as hooks to manipulate me. Maybe, as humanity's consciousness continues to
expand , the same will happen for the people and their abusive relationship with the
CIA.
* * *
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The voting measure has inflamed Republicans, who accused Democrats of engaging in
demagoguery.
"This bill is brazen," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), ticking off a list of provisions in
the Democratic bill that he called damaging, including one that would shrink the Federal
Election Commission to five from six members, which he said would enable the president to turn
the agency into a weapon against political rivals. Mr. Cruz accused Democrats of "deliberately
inflaming racial tensions" by attacking policies like requiring voter identification that
Republicans say are designed to protect the integrity of the vote.
... ... ...
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.), the sponsor of the Senate bill, a version of which
cleared the House in March , told CNN on Monday that there are ways to advance voting
legislation that would involve changing the filibuster, which requires three-fifths of the
Senate, or currently 60 members, to end debates and vote on most legislation.
"Fifty members getting into a room and deciding how we go forward will be kind of another
stage of how we proceed," Mr. Merkley said later on a call with activists.
The pressure-cooker environment in which the debate lands was highlighted by nascent
campaigns inside and outside the Capitol. Republicans are calling attention to a provision in
the Democrats' bill that would allow signatures in lieu of voter identification cards, saying
such a policy could be abused and would weaken trust in the validity of elections. A Monmouth
University poll released Monday found that 80% of Americans support requiring voters to show
photo identification to cast ballots.
Meanwhile, the progressive group Just Democracy is running ads aimed at Ms. Sinema,
suggesting that she is weak on voting policy because she hasn't come out in support of ending
the filibuster to make voting legislation possible.
Ms. Sinema is up for re-election in 2024. Her state is currently roiled by
an audit of votes cast in 2020 in Maricopa County, which Mr. Biden won, and is defending
some of its voting rules at the Supreme Court.
Ending the filibuster may get Democrats everything that the want for another 18 months. But
they will not be able to keep the legislation that they have passed.
As soon as control of both chambers and the White House passes to the other party, they
very quickly will repeal each and every bit of legislation that had been passed by the
Democrats.
At that point, Republicans will be able to pass absolutely everything that they want,
probably for 18 months.
By ending the filibuster we will get national laws that change with every change of
administration.
Aren't we better off, keeping the filibuster, so that nothing is ever accomplished by
either party? Deadlock.
Deadlock pleases politicians and the primary voters in their party, but it frustrates the
80% of Americans who are moderates. They want Congress to act to deal with the country's
problems. But deadlock it will be.
"The Trump""Deep State clash is a showdown between a presidency that is far too powerful
versus federal agencies that have become fiefdoms with immunity for almost any and all abuses,"
I wrote in an FFF article a year ago.
Since then, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by fewer than 50,000 votes in a handful of
swing states that determined the Electoral College result. There were numerous issues that
could drive that relatively small number of votes. But machinations by the Deep State probably
cost Trump far more votes than it took to seal his loss.
... ... ...
The first three years of Trump's presidency were haunted by constant accusations that he had
colluded with Russians to win the 2016 election. The FBI launched its investigation on the
basis of ludicrous allegations from a dossier financed by the Hillary Clinton presidential
campaign. FBI officials deceived the FISA Court to authorize surveilling the Trump campaign. A
FISA warrant is the nuclear bomb of searches, authorizing the FBI "to conduct simultaneous
telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S. person target's
home, workplace and vehicles," as well as "physical searches of the target's residence, office,
vehicles, computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails," as a FISA court decision noted. The FISA
court is extremely deferential, approving 99 percent of all search warrant requests.
Leaks from federal officials spurred media hysteria that put Trump on the defensive even
before he took his oath of office in January 2017. A 2018 Inspector General (IG) report
revealed that one FBI agent labeled Trump supporters as "retarded" and declared, "I'm with her"
(Clinton). Another FBI employee texted that "Trump's supporters are all poor to middle class,
uneducated, lazy POS." One FBI lawyer texted that he was "devastated" by Trump's election and
declared, "Viva la Resistance!" and "I never really liked the Republic anyway." The same person
became the "primary FBI attorney assigned to [the Russian election-interference] investigation
beginning in early 2017," the IG noted.
FBI chief James Comey leaked official memos to friendly reporters, thereby spurring the
appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump. A 2019 Inspector General
report noted that top FBI officials told the IG that they were "shocked," "stunned," and
"surprised' that Comey would leak the contents of one of the memos to a reporter. The IG
concluded, "The unauthorized disclosure of this information" information that Comey knew only
by virtue of his position as FBI Director" violated the terms of his FBI Employment Agreement
and the FBI's Prepublication Review Policy." The IG concluded that by using sensitive
information "to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for
the over 35,000 current FBI employees" and the many thousands more former FBI employees" who
similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information." The IG report warned that
"the civil liberties of every individual who may fall within the scope of the FBI's
investigative authorities depend on FBI's ability to protect sensitive information from
unauthorized disclosure."
But the only penalty that Comey suffered was to collect multimillion-dollar advances for his
book deals.
The Steele dossier
In December 2019, another Inspector General report confirmed that the FBI made "fundamental
errors" to justify surveilling the Trump campaign. The FBI refrained from launching a FISA
warrant request until it came into possession of a dossier from Christopher Steele, a former
British intelligence agent. The Steele dossier played "a central and essential role in the
decision by FBI [Office of General Counsel] to support the request for FISA surveillance
targeting Carter Page, as well as the FBI's ultimate decision to seek the FISA order," the IG
report concluded. The FBI "drew almost entirely" from the Steele dossier to prove a
"well-developed conspiracy" between Russians and the Trump campaign. The IG found that FBI
agents were "unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter
Page" in the Steele dossier but the FBI relied on Steele's allegations regardless.
The FBI withheld from the FISA court key details that obliterated the dossier's credibility,
including a warning from a top Justice Department official that "Steele may have been hired by
someone associated with presidential candidate Clinton or the DNC [Democratic National
Committee]." The CIA disdained the Steele dossier as "an internet rumor," one FBI official told
IG investigators.
Many if not most of the damning details involving Russiagate have still not been disclosed.
But the occasional disclosures are doing nothing to burnish the credibility of the key players.
On January 12, 2017, Comey attested to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court that the
Steele dossier used to hound the Trump campaign had been "verified." But on the same day, he
emailed the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, "We are not able to sufficiently
corroborate the reporting." That email was revealed this past February, thanks to a multi-year
fight for disclosure by the Southeastern Legal Foundation.
If the FBI's deceit and political biases had been exposed in real time, there would have
been far less national outrage when Trump fired Comey. Instead, that firing was quickly
followed by the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the Russian
charges. In April 2019, Mueller admitted there was no evidence of collusion. Conniving by FBI
officials and the veil of secrecy that hid their abuses had roiled national politics for
years.
Not one FBI official has spent a single day in jail for the abuses. In January, former FBI
assistant general counsel Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced after he admitted falsifying key
evidence used to secure the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. A federal prosecutor
declared that the "resulting harm is immeasurable" from Clinesmith's action. But a federal
judge believed that a wrist slap was sufficient punishment" 400 hours of community service and
12 months of probation.
The Deep State defeated Trump in part because the president appointed agency chiefs who were
more devoted to secrecy than to truth. Bureaucratic barricades were reinforced by judges who
repeatedly defied common sense to perpetuate iron curtains around federal
agencies.
Syria
Trump's failure to extract the United States from the Syrian civil war was one of his
biggest foreign policy pratfalls. Each time he sought to exit that quagmire, the Washington
establishment and Deep State agencies pushed back.
When Trump tried to end CIA assistance to Syrian terrorist groups in July 2017, a Washington
Post article portrayed his reversal in apocalyptic terms. Trump responded with an angry tweet:
"The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful
payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad." That disclosure spurred a Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) request by the New York Times for CIA records on payments to Syrian rebel groups. The
CIA denied the request and the case ended up in court.
CIA officer Antoinette Shiner warned the court that forcing the CIA to admit that it
possessed any records of aiding Syrian rebels would "confirm the existence and the focus of
sensitive Agency activity that is by definition kept hidden to protect U.S. government policy
objectives." Of course, "kept hidden" doesn't apply to the CIA when it was engaged in "not for
attribution" bragging to reporters. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius proudly cited an
estimate from a "knowledgeable official" that "CIA-backed fighters may have killed or wounded
100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years."
Federal judges, unlike Syrian civilians slaughtered by U.S.-funded terrorist groups, had the
luxury of pretending the program didn't exist. In a decision last July, the federal appeals
court of the Second Circuit stressed that affidavits from CIA officials are "accorded a
presumption of good faith" and stressed "the appropriate deference owed" to the CIA. The judges
omitted quoting former CIA chief Mike Pompeo's description of his agency's modus operandi: "We
lied, we cheated, we stole. It's like we had entire training courses."
Since Trump's tweet did not specifically state that the program he was seeking to terminate
actually existed, the judges entitled the CIA to pretend it was still top secret. The judges
concluded with another kowtow, stressing that they were "mindful of the requisite deference
courts traditionally owe to the executive in the area of classification." Judge Robert Katzmann
dissented, declaring that the court's decision put its "imprimatur to a fiction of deniability
that no reasonable person would regard as plausible."
On February 9, another federal appeals court shot down a FOIA request from BuzzFeed
journalist Jason Leopold who had sought the same records on the basis of Trump's tweet. But the
federal appeals court for the District of Columbia unanimously blocked Leopold's request: "Did
President Trump's tweet officially acknowledge the existence of a program? Perhaps. Or perhaps
not. And therein lies a problem." The judges proffered no evidence that Trump had tweeted about
a program that didn't exist. The judges reached into an "Alice in Wonderland" bag of legal
tricks and plucked out this pretext: "Even if the President's tweet revealed some program, it
did not reveal the existence of Agency records about that alleged program." Since Trump failed
to specify the exact room number where the records were located at CIA headquarters, the judges
entitled the CIA to pretend the records didn't exist.
Only a federal judge could shovel that kind of hokum. Well, also members of Congress and
editorial writers, but that's a story for another month.
* * *
In his final months in office, Trump repeatedly promised massive declassification which
never came.
Was the president stymied by persons he had unwisely appointed, such as CIA chief Gina
Haspel and FBI chief Christopher Wray? Or was that simply another series of empty Twitter
eruptions that Trump failed to follow up? Instead, his legacy is another grim reminder of how
government secrecy can determine political history.
Have Deep State federal agencies become a Godzilla with the prerogative to undermine
elections? Unfortunately, there's no chance that federal judges would permit disclosure of the
answer to that question.
Former CIA and NSA boss Michael Hayden proudly proclaimed,
""Espionage is not just compatible with democracy; it's essential for democracy."
And how can we know if the Deep State's espionage is actually pro-democracy or subversive of
democracy? Again, don't expect judges to permit any truths to escape on that score.
Secrecy is the ultimate entitlement program for the Deep State. The federal government is
creating trillions of pages of new secrets every year. The more documents bureaucrats classify,
the more lies politicians and government officials can tell. Federal judge Amy Berman Jackson
warned in 2019, "If people don't have the facts, democracy doesn't work."
Actually, it is working very well for the FBI, CIA, and other Deep State agencies.
capsrule 8 minutes ago
Not much of a clash. Trump had his *** handed to him because he was a moron who
handicapped himself by filling his cabinet with horrible people that sabotaged him and his
agenda at every turn - including his incompetent son in law and daughter. Not once did he
go on offense. He was reduced to pathetic Twitter rantings begging DOJ to "Do
something!"
No_Pretzel_Logic 16 minutes ago
The USA is a captured nation and has been for quite awhile.
Little is as it seems to be. Good luck...
Wise Limit 18 minutes ago (Edited)
Donald Trump was a jester. A reality TV actor to give the masses the appearance they got
what they wanted while they pacified conservatives and spent four years to plan and
strategize the next steps in the infiltration, takeover and destruction of the country.
Voting is a sham.
... ... ...
Wise Limit 11 minutes ago (Edited) remove link
Remember all those promises from Trump and the GOP if they "just got the majority" in
2016?
1. Dreamers will be gone.
2. Obamacare will be gone.
3. Hillary will be gone.
4. Mexico will pay for the wall.
Politicians are the greatest actors. Politics is done. Time to fight for secession of
Southern conservative states.
No_Pretzel_Logic 12 minutes ago remove link
It seems that there is merit to what you say but, I cannot square all the overblown
attempts to nail him and to impeach him on bogus grounds. Then to try again a second
time.
The Dems and Deep Staters (incl media) could have just kept-up the usual partisan
fighting, sniping, etc.
Trump was obviously a true threat to many. I'll bet Ric Grenell and John Radcliffe
acquired ALOT of valuable info about important people.
Wise Limit 5 minutes ago (Edited)
This is all that needs to be squared right here. This was after the election, after the
"she would be in jail" rhetoric.
I got played too. I just didn't figure it out until 2018 when I saw Trump and the GOP
lied again, the Democrats took the House and suddenly "Q" appeared to distract the masses
from the fact they didn't fulfill any of their promises.
Gospel According To Me 6 minutes ago (Edited)
The Deep State is a threat to our very existence as a mostly peaceful oligarchy. They
will stop at NOTHING to destroy anyone who attempts to stop them. Trump could never defeat
them alone and everyone he hired was quickly cotrrupted by those Deep State actors. They
became close allies with our own communists and the CCP. These sick individuals probably
had a role in the plandemic and were happy to see all the business failures, etc, as a path
to keeping power. If Trump wins in 2024 he must get rid of thousands of government SES
employees in every agency or they will destroy his presidency again.
Unfortunatley, the best hope to turn things around is complete economic collapse, which
is likley. The leftists will continue to buy votes, but when the cities burn it won't be
enough. Trump's team better understand it takes money to fight the globalists and a real
dirty campaign like the Dems run. No holds barred...tell Americans what a s***hole the
leftists have made America into. Wide open borders with millions pouring across and jobs
drying up. Rampant crime and soaring inflation.
Allow legal voters only with ID! It will work! Pray for a leader to get us out of this
perverse woke mess.
zod 6 minutes ago
trump was the most entertaining, in a long line of the same, 'illusion of choice' we've
always had.
2pac 12 minutes ago
Don't worry - Durham investigation should be done any day now.
Money quote: " Zerohedge has more traffic than Huffington Post, Vox, Vice, The Atlantic and
pretty well any of the other bluecheck day camps for aspiring establishment shills."
Late Stage Globalism Is A Tale of
Narratives vs Networks
Over the past few weeks in my weekly
#AxisOfEasy newsletter I've been covering how Big Tech and the corporate media tried,
unsuccessfully, to keep a lid on the Wuhan Lab origin narrative. At one point I half-joked
"I'll shut up about this when it's safe to talk about Ivermectin" . This week, I did end up
writing a piece about Ivermectin, namely how doctors can't even mention it in their videos or
podcast appearances without being penalized by social media platforms.
Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist who has studied bats (from which COVID-19
purportedly originated) was recently on
Triggernometry , the UK based podcast that my company, easyDNS , has been sponsoring since mid-2020. It turns out that
neither Weinstein nor Triggernometry can say the word "Ivermectin" in their shows. If they do
they'll get an automatic takedown by YouTube and a strike on Facebook for violating community
standards.
Matt Taibbi recently posed the question " Why has
"˜Ivermectin' become a dirty word? " He cites Dr. Pierre Kory in his testimony to a
US Senate Committee hearing on medical responses to COVID-19 in December 2020. Kory was
referring to an existing medicine that was already FDA approved that he was describing as a
"wonder drug" in treating COVID-19, that drug was Ivermectin.
This Senate testimony was televised and viewed by approximately 8 million people. YouTube
removed the video of this exchange. They later suspended the account of the United States
senator who invited Dr. Kory to speak. (Kory also appeared on Brett Weinstein's show and they
took down that as well).
Associated Press for their part "fact
checked" the senate testimony, and because, in their words "there is no evidence that
Ivermectin is a "˜miracle drug' against COVID", they labeled it as false:
CLAIM: The antiparasitic drug ivermectin "has a miraculous effectiveness that obliterates"
the transmission of COVID-19 and will prevent people from getting sick.
AP'S ASSESSMENT: False. There's no evidence ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective
treatment against COVID-19.
... ... ...
But I'm looking beyond that, outside of network TV. The hottest news outlets are fast
becoming independent journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald , self-publishing via their Substack.
That's mainly email.
Joe Rogan has a larger audience than Rachel Maddow and Don Lemon combined. So too does Steve
Bannon, btw. The few times I've been on his
Warroom I was astounded at the reach of his audience. According to company sources he's
doing between 2.5 and 3.5 million downloads per day. The last people I would ever expect to be
tuning into Bannon are telling me "I saw you on Warroom". (It's mind-blowing).
Zerohedge has more traffic than Huffington Post, Vox, Vice, The Atlantic and pretty well any
of the other bluecheck day camps for aspiring establishment shills.
It's because of independent, renegade journalists and people writing outside of major
outlets that these stories are starting go mainstream despite the best efforts of Big Tech,
enforcing whatever canon the corporate press deems to be truth, or the establishment anointed
"fact checkers" who try to step in whenever something looks to gain traction:
The Wuhan lab origin was suspected for over a year (and the Fauci emails prove it).
Zerohedge was on it almost immediately and
got deplatformed for their troubles. It was finally pushed over the line in a
Medium post by Nicholas Wade over a year later.
Ivermectin may be next round and it looks like if it gets anywhere it will be thanks to
people like Matt Taibbi and Bret Weinstein.
What is the common thread here? It's the power of decentralized networks and open source
protocols vs narrative control that is promulgated from global governments, amplified by the
corporate media, and enforced by technocratic platforms.
... ... ...
It may seem like the censorship is absolute and that the narrative and the spin is
overwhelming. But take solace that it only appears that way because the facade is breaking.
As more people realize that the centralized technocratic system is failing, those who's
privilege and position are premised on it have to double down, triple down. They have to burn
the boats.
They're fully committed now and because they have no other choice they have to overstep and
overreach. Too much, too soon. Too late.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of
time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that
glorifies it."
- Frédéric Bastiat, French economist
If there is an absolute maxim by which the American government seems to operate, it is that
the taxpayer always gets ripped off.
With every new tax, fine, fee and law adopted by our so-called representatives, the yoke
around the neck of the average American seems to tighten just a little bit more.
Everywhere you go, everything you do, and every which way you look, we're getting swindled,
cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and
fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a
profit at taxpayer expense.
The overt and costly signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian
regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us: warrantless
surveillance of Americans' private phone and email conversations by the FBI, NSA, etc.; SWAT
team raids of Americans' homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments
meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; drones taking to the skies
domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip
searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that
collect and disseminate data on Americans' private transactions; and militarized agencies with
stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.
Meanwhile, the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) and the
agencies under their command -- Defense, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, Justice,
Treasury, etc. -- have switched their allegiance to the Corporate State with its unassailable
pursuit of profit at all costs and by any means possible.
By the time you factor in the financial blowback from the COVID-19 pandemic with its
politicized mandates, lockdowns, and payouts, it becomes quickly apparent that we are now ruled
by a government consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly
unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.
As with most things, if you want to know the real motives behind any government program,
follow the money trail.
When you dig down far enough, you quickly find that those who profit from Americans being
surveilled, fined, scanned, searched, probed, tasered, arrested and imprisoned are none other
than the police who arrest them, the courts which try them, the prisons which incarcerate them,
and the corporations, which manufacture the weapons, equipment and prisons used by the American
police state.
Examples of this legalized, profits-over-people, government-sanctioned extortion abound.
On the roads : Not satisfied with merely padding their budgets by
issuing speeding tickets, police departments have turned to asset forfeiture and
red light camera schemes as a means of growing their profits. Despite revelations of
corruption,
collusion and fraud, these money-making scams have been being inflicted on unsuspecting
drivers by revenue-hungry municipalities. Now legislators are hoping to get in on the profit
sharing by imposing a vehicle
miles-traveled tax , which would charge drivers for each mile behind the wheel.
In the schools: The security industrial complex with its tracking, spying, and
identification
devices has set its sights on the schools as " a vast, rich market " -- a $20 billion market, no
less -- just waiting to be conquered. In fact, the public schools have become a microcosm of
the total surveillance state which currently dominates America, adopting a host of
surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners,
as well as RFID and GPS tracking devices, to keep constant watch over their student bodies.
Likewise, the military industrial complex with its military weapons, metal detectors, and
weapons of compliance such as tasers has succeeded in transforming the schools -- at great
taxpayer expense and personal profit -- into quasi-prisons. Rounding things out are
school truancy
laws , which come disguised as well-meaning attempts to resolve attendance issues in the
schools but in truth are nothing less than stealth maneuvers aimed at enriching school
districts and court systems alike through excessive fines and jail sentences for
"unauthorized" absences. Curiously, none of these efforts seem to have succeeded in making
the schools any safer.
In the endless wars abroad : Fueled by the profit-driven military industrial complex, the
government's endless wars are wreaking havoc on our communities, our budget and our police
forces. Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and
incompetent government officials, America's expanding military empire is bleeding the country
dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour . Future wars and
military exercises waged around the globe are expected to
push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053 . Talk about fiscally irresponsible:
the U.S. government is spending money it doesn't have on a military empire it can't afford.
War spending is bankrupting America.
In the form of militarized police : The Department of Homeland Security routinely hands
out six-figure
grants to enable local municipalities to purchase military-style vehicles, as well as a
veritable war chest of weaponry, ranging from tactical vests, bomb-disarming robots, assault
weapons and combat uniforms. This rise in military equipment purchases funded by the DHS has,
according to analysts Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz, "
paralleled an apparent increase in local SWAT teams ." The end result? An explosive
growth in the use of SWAT teams for otherwise routine police matters, an increased tendency
on the part of police to shoot first and ask questions later, and an overall mindset within
police forces that they are at war -- and the citizenry are the enemy combatants. Over 80,000
SWAT team raids are conducted on American homes and businesses each year. Moreover,
government-funded
military-style training drills continue to take place in cities across the country.
In profit-driven schemes such as asset forfeiture : Under the guise of fighting the war on
drugs, government agents (usually the police) have been given broad leeway to seize billions
of dollars' worth of private property (money, cars, TVs, etc.) they "suspect" may be
connected to criminal activity. Then -- and here's the kicker -- whether or not any crime is
actually proven to have taken place, the government keeps the citizen's property, often
divvying it up with the local police who did the initial seizure. The police are actually
being
trained in seminars on how to seize the "goodies" that are on police departments' wish
lists. According to the New York Times, seized monies have been used by police to "pay for
sports tickets, office parties, a home security system and a $90,000 sports car."
By the security industrial complex : We're being spied on by a domestic army of government
snitches, spies and techno-warriors. In the so-called name of "precrime," this government of
Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading
everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend.
Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you
communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used
against you eventually, at a time and place of the government's choosing. This far-reaching
surveillance, carried out with the complicity of the Corporate State, has paved the way for
an
omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government -- the Surveillance State -- that
came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum. That doesn't even
touch on the government's bold forays into biometric surveillance as a means of identifying
and tracking the American people from birth to death.
By a government addicted to power: It's a given that you can always count on the
government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured. Emboldened by the
citizenry's inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized
one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers. The war on terror, the war
on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes,
school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate
responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the
police state's hands. Now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state
powers by way of a bevy of COVID-19 lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing
programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., "we the people" may
well find ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers
to protect us from ourselves.
These injustices, petty tyrannies and overt acts of hostility are being carried out in the
name of the national good -- against the interests of individuals, society and ultimately our
freedoms -- by an elite class of government officials working in partnership with
megacorporations that are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
This perverse mixture of government authoritarianism and corporate profits has increased the
reach of the state into our private lives while also adding a profit motive into the mix. And,
as always, it's we the people, we the taxpayers, we the gullible voters who keep getting taken
for a ride by politicians eager to promise us the world on a plate.
This is a far cry from how a representative government is supposed to operate.
Indeed, it has been a long time since we could claim to be the masters of our own lives.
Rather, we are now the subjects of a militarized, corporate empire in which the vast majority
of the citizenry work their hands to the bone for the benefit of a privileged few
Adding injury to the ongoing insult of having our tax dollars misused and our so-called
representatives bought and paid for by the moneyed elite, the government then turns around and
uses the money we earn with our blood, sweat and tears to target, imprison and entrap us, in
the form of militarized police, surveillance cameras, private prisons, license plate readers,
drones, and cell phone tracking technology.
All of those nefarious deeds by government officials that you hear about every day: those
are your tax dollars at work.
It's your money that allows for government agents to spy on your emails, your phone calls,
your text messages, and your movements. It's your money that allows out-of-control police
officers to burst into innocent people's homes, or probe and strip search motorists on the side
of the road. And it's your money that leads to Americans across the country being prosecuted
for innocuous activities such as growing vegetable gardens in their front yards or daring to
speak their truth to their elected officials.
Just remember the next time you see a news story that makes your blood boil, whether it's a
police officer arresting someone for filming them in public, or a child being kicked out of
school for attending a virtual class while playing with a toy gun, remember that it is your tax
dollars that are paying for these injustices.
There was a time in our history when our forebears said "enough is enough" and stopped
paying their taxes to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground
and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance,
and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people.
Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.
Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we've let
bankers, turncoats and number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the accounts to
such an extent that we're back where we started.
Once again, we've got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as they please.
Once again, we've got a judicial system insisting we have no rights under a government which
demands that the people march in lockstep with its dictates.
And once again, we've got to decide whether we'll keep marching or break stride and make a
turn toward freedom.
But what if we didn't just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government's
outrageous demands for more money?
What if we didn't just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the collection
bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent?
What if, instead of quietly sending in our checks, hoping vainly for some meager return, we
did a little calculating of our own and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we
refuse to support?
As I make clear in my book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People , if the government and its emissaries can just
take from you what they want, when they want, and then use it however they want, you can't
claim to be anything more than a serf in a land they think of as theirs.
"... ...the prerogative to define extremism includes the power to attempt to banish certain ideas from acceptable discourse. The report warns that "narratives of fraud in the recent general election"¦ will almost certainly spur some [Domestic Violent Extremists] to try to engage in violence this year." ..."
"... If accusations of 2020 electoral shenanigans are formally labeled as extremist threats, that could result in far more repression (aided by Facebook and Twitter) of dissenting voices. ..."
...the prerogative to define extremism includes the power to attempt to banish certain ideas
from acceptable discourse. The report warns that "narratives of fraud in the recent general
election"¦ will almost certainly spur some [Domestic Violent Extremists] to try to
engage in violence this year."
If accusations of 2020 electoral shenanigans are formally labeled as extremist threats, that
could result in far more repression (aided by Facebook and Twitter) of dissenting voices.
How will this work out any better than the concerted campaign by the media and Big Tech last
fall to suppress all information about Hunter Biden's laptop before the election?
The Biden administration is revving up for a war against an enemy which the feds have chosen
to never explicitly define . According to a March report by Biden's Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, "domestic violent extremists" include individuals who "take overt steps
to violently resist or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. government in support of their
belief that the U.S. government is purposely exceeding its Constitutional authority." But that
was the same belief that many Biden voters had regarding the Trump administration. Does the
definition of extremism depend solely on which party captured the White House?
The report notes that the "Department of Defense is reviewing and updating its definition of
prohibited extremist activities among uniformed military personnel." Bishop Garrison, the chief
of the Pentagon's new Countering Extremism Working Group, is Exhibit A for the follies of
extremist crackdowns on extremism. In a series of 2019 tweets, Garrison, a former aide to
Hillary Clinton,
denounced all Trump supporters as "racists." Garrison's working group will "specifically
define what constitutes extremist behavior" for American soldiers. If Garrison purges Trump
supporters from the military, the Pentagon would be unable to conquer the island of Grenada.
Biden policymakers also intend to create an "anti-radicalization" program for individuals
departing the military service. This initiative will likely produce plenty of leaks and
embarrassing disclosures in the coming months and years.
The Biden report is spooked by the existence of militia groups and flirts with the fantasy
of outlawing them across the land. The report promises to explore "how to make better use of
laws that already exist in all fifty states prohibiting certain private "˜militia'
activity, including"¦state statutes prohibiting groups of people from organizing as
private military units without the authorization of the state government, and state statutes
that criminalize certain paramilitary activity." Most of the private militia groups are guilty
of nothing more than bluster and braggadocio. Besides, many of them are already overstocked
with government informants who are counting on Uncle Sam for regular paychecks.
As part of its anti-extremism arsenal, DHS is financing programs for "enhancing media
literacy and critical thinking skills" and helping internet users avoid "vulnerability
to"¦harmful content deliberately disseminated by malicious actors online." Do the feds
have inside information about another Hunter Biden laptop turning up, or what? The Biden
administration intends to bolster Americans' defenses against extremism by developing
"interactive online resources such as skills-enhancing online games." If the games are as
stupefying as this report, nobody will play them.
The Biden report stresses that federal law enforcement agencies "play a critical role in
responding to reports of criminal and otherwise concerning activity." "Otherwise concerning
activity"? This is the same standard that turned prior anti-terrorist efforts into
laughingstocks.
Fusion Centers are not mentioned in the Biden report but they are a federal-state-local law
enforcement partnership launched after 9/11 to vacuum up reports of suspicious activity.
Seventy Fusion Centers rely on the same standard"""
If you see something, say something """that a senior administration official invoked in a
background call on Monday for the new Biden initiative. The Los Angeles Police Department
encouraged citizens to snitch on "individuals who stay at bus or train stops for extended
periods while buses and trains come and go," "individuals who carry on long conversations on
pay or cellular telephones," and "joggers who stand and stretch for an inordinate amount of
time." The Kentucky Office of Homeland Security recommended the reporting of "people avoiding
eye contact," "people in places they don't belong," or homes or apartments that have numerous
visitors "arriving and leaving at unusual hours," PBS's Frontline reported. Colorado's Fusion
Center "produced a fear-mongering public service announcement asking the public to report
innocuous behaviors such as photography, note-taking, drawing and collecting money for charity
as "˜warning signs' of terrorism," the ACLU complained.
Various other Fusion Centers have attached warning labels to gun-rights activists,
anti-immigration zealots, and individuals and groups "rejecting federal authority in favor of
state or local authority." A 2012 Homeland Security report stated that being "reverent of
individual liberty" is one of the traits of potential right-wing terrorists. The Constitution
Project concluded in a 2012 report that DHS Fusion Centers "pose serious risks to civil
liberties, including rights of free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion, racial and
religious equality, privacy, and the right to be free from unnecessary government intrusion."
Fusion Centers continue to be bankrolled by DHS despite their dismal record.
The Biden report promises that the FBI and DHS will soon be releasing "a new edition of the
Federal Government's Mobilization Indicators booklet that will include for the first time
potential indicators of domestic terrorism""related mobilization." Will this latest publication
be as boneheaded as the similar 2014 report by the National Counterterrorism Center entitled
"Countering Violent Extremism: A Guide for Practitioners and Analysts"?
As the Intercept
summarized , that report "suggests that police, social workers and educators rate
individuals on a scale of one to five in categories such as "˜Expressions of
Hopelessness, Futility,' "¦ and "˜Connection to Group Identity (Race, Nationality,
Religion, Ethnicity)' "¦ to alert government officials to individuals at risk of turning
to radical violence, and to families or communities at risk of incubating extremist
ideologies." The report recommended judging families by their level of "Parent-Child Bonding"
and rating localities on the basis in part of the "presence of ideologues or recruiters."
Former FBI agent Mike German commented, "The idea that the federal government would encourage
local police, teachers, medical, and social-service employees to rate the communities,
individuals, and families they serve for their potential to become terrorists is abhorrent on
its face."
The Biden administration presumes that bloating the definition of extremists is the surest
way to achieve domestic tranquility. In this area, as in so many others, Biden's team learned
nothing from the follies of the Obama administration. No one in D.C. apparently recalls that
President Obama perennially denounced extremism and summoned the United Nations in 2014 to join
his "campaign against extremism." Under Obama, the National Security Agency
presumed that "someone searching the Web for suspicious stuff" was a suspected extremist
who forfeited all constitutional rights to privacy. Obama's Transportation Security
Administration relied on
ludicrous terrorist profiles that targeted American travelers who were yawning, hand
wringing, gazing down, swallowing suspiciously, sweating, or making "excessive complaints about
the [TSA] screening process."
Will the Biden crackdown on extremists end as ignominiously as Nixon's crackdown almost 50
years earlier? Nixon White House aide Tom Charles Huston explained
that the FBI's COINTELPRO program continually stretched its target list "from the kid with a
bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the
bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line." At some
point, surveillance became more intent on spurring fear than on gathering information. FBI
agents were
encouraged to conduct interviews with anti-war protesters to "enhance the paranoia endemic
in these circles and further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind
every mailbox," as a 1970 FBI memo noted. Is the Biden castigation campaign an attempt to make
its opponents fear that the feds are tracking their every email and website click?
Biden's new terrorism policy has evoked plenty of cheers from his Fourth Estate lapdogs. But
a
Washington Post article fretted that the administration's report did not endorse enacting
"new legal authority to successfully hunt down, prosecute, and imprison homegrown extremists."
Does the D.C. media elite want to see every anti-Biden scoffer in the land put behind bars?
This is typical of the switcheroo that politicians and the media play with the terms
"terrorists" and "extremists." Regardless of paranoia inside the Beltway, MAGA hats are not as
dangerous as pipe bombs.
The Biden report concludes that "enhancing faith in American democracy" requires "finding
ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories." Bu t permitting
politicians to blacklist any ideas they disapprove won't "restore faith in democracy."
Extremism has always been a flag of political convenience, and the Biden team, the FBI, and
their media allies will fan fears to sanctify any and every government crackdown. But what if
government is the most dangerous extremist of them all?
In reality big tech is the part of neoliberal elite that control the politics and politician
(the USA politics and politicians were privatized during Reagan and nothing changed since that
period). They also has strong ties with intelligence community often emerging from some some
intelligence agency plan and DAPRA or CIA funds. So it is strange to be suprozed that they will
always take the side of the government -- they control the goverment...
The Democrats in Congress want comprehensive regulation of social media which will
ultimately allow regime regulators to decide what is and what is not "disinformation." This has
become very clear as Congress has held a series of Congressional hearings designed to pressure
tech leaders into doing even more to silence critics of the regime and its preferred
center-left narratives.
Back in February, for instance, Glen Greenwald reported:
For the third time in
less than five months , the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies
to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more
content from their platforms.
House Democrats have made no secret of their ultimate goal with this hearing: to exert
control over the content on these online platforms. "Industry self-regulation has failed,"
they said, and therefore "we must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media
companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation." In other words, they
intend to use state power to influence and coerce these companies to change which content
they do and do not allow to be published.
Greenwald is probably right. The end game here is likely to create a permanent "partnership"
between big tech in which government regulators will ultimately decide just how much these
platforms will deplatform user and delete content that run afoul of the regime's messaging.
It might strike many readers as odd that this should even be necessary. It's already become
quite clear that Big Social Media is hardly an enemy of mainstream proregime forces in
Washington. Quite the opposite.
Jack Dorsey, for instance, is exactly the sort of partisan regime apparatchik one expects
out of today's Silicon Valley. For example, during October of last year ,
Twitter locked down the account of the New York Post , because the Post reported a story on
Hunter Biden that threatened to hurt Biden's chances for election.
Over 90 percent of political donation money coming out of Facebook and Twitter goes to
Democrats.
Yet, it's important to keep in mind that this isn't going to be enough to convince
politicians to pack up and decide to leave social media companies alone. The regime is unlikely
to be satisfied with anything other than full state control of social media through permanent
regulatory bodies that can ultimately bring the industry to heel. Regardless of the ideological
leanings of the industry players involved, they're likely to see the writing on the wall. As
with any regime where the regulators and legislators hold immense power -- as is the case in
Washington today -- the regime will generally be able to win the "cooperation" of industry
leaders who will end up taking a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" position.
Silicon
Valley Is Ideologically Allied with the Regime. But That's Not Enough.
It's been abundantly clear for at least a decade that ideologically speaking, Silicon Valley
is as
politically mainstream as it gets. The old early-2000s notion that Silicon Valley harbors
secret libertarian, antiestablishment leanings has been disproven dozens of times over.
Moreover, Washington has a long history of co-opting tech "geniuses" to serve the whims of
the regime. Even back in 2013 Julian Assange already saw the "ever closer union" between
government agents and Silicon Valley. Assange saw how federal agencies were hiring Silicon
Valley workers as "consultants" and saw where the "partnership" was headed. He concluded "The
advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most
people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism."
But even if Silicon Valley is packed full of stooges for the NSA --
as appears to be the case -- this still doesn't mean that Silicon Valley firms are willing
to happily hand over their property to the federal government. After all, Silicon Valley CEOs,
managers, and stockholders are all still at least partly in it for the money. All else being
equal, they prefer profit to loss, and they want freedom to make decisions free of regulatory
control. They probably don't care about freedom in the abstract, but they care about it for
themselves.
The Threat of Regulation Creates Support for the Regime
On the other hand, once federal policymakers and regulators start making threats, the game
changes entirely. All of a sudden, it makes a lot of sense to pursue "friendly" relations with
the state as a matter of self-preservation. If Washington has the ability to destroy your
business -- and if it has become impossible to "fly under the radar" -- then it makes a lot of
sense to make Washington your friend.
Under these circumstances, there's little to be gained from blanket opposition to federal
regulation, and a lot to be gained from embracing regulation while merely working to ensure
that regulation benefits you and your friends.
Big Business versus Small Business
So, it should never surprise us when big business ultimately ends up siding with the regime.
It would be folly not to, especially if one has the means to hire lobbyists, attorneys, and PR
consultants which can help Big Business negotiate effectively with regulators. Needless to say,
the outcomes of these negotiations are likely to end up helping the big players at the expense
of smaller ones who aren't even present at the negotiating table.
For small firms that have little hope of influencing federal policy, it still makes sense to
simply oppose federal activism altogether and hope for the best. But if your firm manages to
get a seat "at the table" it's best to seize the opportunity. To quote an old saying among
lobbyists: "if you're not at the table, you're on the menu."
But let us not forget that even when private firms can bring immense amounts of resources to
bear for purposes of influencing public policy and negotiating with bureaucrats: the regime
itself ultimately holds the advantage. No private firm in the world has the resources to ignore
or veto the wishes of the regime's army of regulatory, prosecutors, and tax collectors. No
private firm enjoys anything approaching the coercive monopoly power of the state.
But this doesn't mean those firms can't share in this power. And that's very often what
happens. Faced with a "join us or be destroyed" ultimatum from federal regulators or lawmakers,
most private firms choose the "join us" option. Of course, many smaller firms aren't even
offered the choice.
Tillyoudrop 9 minutes ago (Edited)
Wwwwrong.
BIG BUSINESS is the Regime, they own this fxxxing place, and they control you by the
balls.
AriusArmenian 3 minutes ago remove link
All the major social media companies in the US were funded and controlled by the CIA
from startup.
There is not a future end-game - it has been the CIA's agenda from the beginning.
The CIA along with Watt Street and the MIC owns and controls the US from top to bottom -
and they intend for the lumpen white people to fall on their swords. This is all to the
interests of the rich and powerful button pushers. I pity the young people like idiots so
easily used by the elites.
freedommusic 10 minutes ago
Well when DARPA, the DOD, CIA, et al, created your company what choice do you have?
What did you think this company is YOURS Mr Z?
We created LifeLog with The Peoples money, handed it
over to you so there is plausible deniability, and are now weaponizing this data against
the very people who have funded it.
Welcome to the MO of monolithic government.
bunnyswanson 1 minute ago
Big Business is the regime. Unfair competition is the name of their game. Monopolizing
their industry is their goal. Oversight committees should have stopped them but simple men
who define themselves by what they own sell out eagerly.
The National Security Agency ( NSA ) has agreed to release records on the FBI 's improper spying on thousands of
Americans , the secretive agency disclosed in a recent letter.
The agreement may signal a rift between the NSA and the FBI, according to attorney Ty
Clevenger.
Clevenger last year filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on behalf of The
Transparency Project, a Texas nonprofit, seeking information on the FBI's improper searches of
intelligence databases for information on 16,000 Americans.
The searches violated rules governing how to use the U.S. government's foreign intelligence
information trove, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, an Obama nominee who currently presides
over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, wrote in a
2019 memorandum and order that was declassified last year.
The FBI insisted that the queries for all 16,000 people "were reasonably likely to return
foreign-intelligence information or evidence of a crime because [redacted]," Boasberg wrote.
But the judge found that position "unsupportable," apart from searches on just seven of the
people.
Still, Boasberg allowed the data collection to continue, prompting Elizabeth Goitein,
co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice,
to
lament that court's decision on the data collection program, authorized by Section 702 of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), "is even more inexplicable given that the
opinion was issued shortly after the government reported submitting FISA applications riddled
with errors and omissions in the Carter Page investigation."
After the judge's order was made public, Clevenger filed FOIA requests for information on
the improper searches with both the FBI and the NSA.
The FBI rejected the request .
In a February letter ( pdf ), an
official told Clevenger that the letter he wrote "does not contain enough descriptive
information to permit a search of our records."
The NSA initially declined the request as well, but later granted an appeal of the decision
, Linda Kiyosaki, an NSA official, said in a letter ( pdf )
this month.
"You had requested all documents, records, and other tangible evidence reflecting the
improper surveillance of 16,000 individuals described in a 6 December, 2019, FISC Opinion,"
Kiyosaki wrote.
Clevenger believes the NSA's new position signals a rift between the two agencies,
potentially because the FBI
has repeatedly
abused rules
governing searches of the intelligence databases while the NSA has largely not.
"There's been a battle between them, for example, Mike Rogers tried to shut off FBI access
to the NSA database back in 2016," Clevenger told The Epoch Times, referring to how Adm. Mike
Rogers, the former NSA director,
cut out FBI agents from using the databases in 2016 .
"And so there's been some history of the NSA trying to limit the FBI's access because they
know that the FBI is misusing the data intercepts," he added.
The NSA and FBI did not respond to requests for comment.
Reddit is one of the world's most influential news and social media platforms. The website
attracted
over 1.2 billion visits in April 2021 alone, making it the United States' eighth most visited
site, ahead of other leviathans like Twitter, Instagram and eBay. Now majority-owned by a much
larger corporate publishing empire, Reddit is also far ahead of more established news sites,
garnering three times the numbers of Fox News and five times those of The New York
Times .
That is why it was so surprising that so little was made of the company's decision to
appoint foreign policy hawk Jessica Ashooh to the position of Director of Policy in 2017, at
which time it was also the eight most visited site in the U.S. Ashooh, who had been a Middle
East foreign policy wonk at NATO's think tank the Atlantic Council, was appointed at around the
same time that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee was
demanding more control over the popular website, on the grounds that it was being used to
spread disinformation. In her role as Director of Policy, she oversees all government relations
and public policy for the company, in addition to managing content, product and advertising.
Yet a Google search for "Jessica Ashooh Reddit" filtered between late 2016 and early 2017
(after she was appointed) elicits
zero relevant results, meaning not one media outlet even mentioned the questionable
appointment.
This is all the more hair-raising, given her resume as a high state official -- all of which
raises serious questions about the extent of collaboration between Silicon Valley and the
national security state.
A hawk's talons on Syria
The Atlantic Council is the de-facto brains of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
takes
funding from the military alliance, as well as from the U.S. government, the U.S. military,
Middle Eastern dictatorships, other Western governments, big tech companies, and weapons
manufacturers. Its board of directors has been and
continues to be a who's who of high U.S. statespeople like Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and
Condoleezza Rice, as well as senior military commanders such as retired generals Wesley Clark,
David Petraeus, H.R. McMaster, James "Mad Dog" Mattis, the late Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, and
Admiral James Stavridis. At least seven former CIA directors are also on the board. As such,
the council chooses to represent both political wings of the national security
state.
Ashooh's LinkedIn resume epitomizes the troubling relantionship between think tanks and big
tech
Between 2015 and 2017, Ashooh was Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council's Middle East
Strategy Task Force, working directly with and under Madeline Albright and Stephen Hadley. This
is particularly noteworthy, given both these individuals' roles in the region. As Bill
Clinton's secretary of state, Albright oversaw the Iraq sanctions and the Oil for Food Program,
denounced as "genocide" by the
successive United Nations diplomats charged with
carrying them out. In an infamous interview with 60 Minutes , Albright casually brushed
off a question about her role in the killing of half a million children,
stating "the price is worth it." Meanwhile, Hadley was deputy or senior national security
advisor to the government of George W. Bush throughout the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions,
surely the greatest crimes against humanity thus far in the 21st century.
Ashooh appears to be as hawkish as her bosses. Her particular area of expertise is the war
in Syria, regarding which she has been among the most belligerent voices, constantly calling
for more American intervention to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad. In a 2015
interview with Al
Jazeera , she praised the U.K. government's decision to bomb the country, claiming that the
British public was "coming around" to the idea of war. A shocked interviewer asked "how will
the British airstrikes [on] Syria make the British public any safer?" Ashooh replied that it
was "generally a positive decision" because "it goes a long way in improving international
consensus on the way forward on Syria," although she lamented that there wouldn't be "much
improvement in the situation without ground troops." There will be "no political solution
without a military element," she predicted, essentially making the pitch for war.
Ashooh has also constantly praised and supported Syria's opposition forces. In 2016, she
said that she was
very happy that "fighters on the ground from a number of key factions" were uniting against the
"Assad regime." She condemned Russia for claiming these opposition forces were members of
terrorist groups like Al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam or ISIS, insisting that these were "moderate"
rebels.
Of course, the idea that there was still any measurable distance between "moderate" rebels
and outright militant jihadists by 2016 was
hard to maintain . Even The Washington Post by this time was
admitting as much, noting that so-called moderates were now so "intermingled" with al-Nusra
that it was difficult to tell them apart.
Nevertheless, the New Hampshire native took to the pages of The New York Times to
demand that the U.S. arm the opposition. Of course, it was already doing so, the CIA
spending
$1 billion per year fielding rebel mercenary armies in the conflict -- with one in every 15
dollars the agency
spent going to this endeavor. All of this Ashooh surely knew, yet she maintained that the
West must continue to "jack up the price" of Russia defending Assad. "As long as [Assad]
remains in power and remains the figurehead of the Syrian government this conflict won't end,"
she said , laying out
her regime-change-or-bust position. Just weeks before unexpectedly taking over at Reddit,
Ashooh seemed to still be in full foreign-policy-hawk mode, condemning Obama in the pages of
The Washington Post for his apparent softness on Syria and
demanding that Trump "restore U.S. credibility" by "order[ing] targeted, punitive strikes
against the Assad regime."
Ashooh attends British Polo Day at Abu Dhabi's Ghantoot Racing and Polo Club. Photo | Ahlan
Dirty war, dirty warrior
Ashooh is actually even more involved in the Syrian conflict than one might realize from her
hawkish opinions alone. Between 2011 and 2015, she worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the United Arab Emirates, in her own words , "[p]rovid[ing] senior decision
makers with policy analysis and strategic advice, with a particular focus on Syria."
At that time the UAE was using its enormous financial clout to arm and fund a myriad of
jihadist groups attempting to overthow the secular strongman Assad and establish some kind of
Islamic state. Far from a conspiracy theory, this comes straight from the horse's mouth, as
then-Vice President Joe Biden revealed in a Q&A session in 2014. The future president
frankly stated :
The Saudis, the Emiratis, what were they doing? They poured hundreds of millions of
dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad,
except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist
elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. "
Under pressure, he later apologized
for his loose lips.
MintPress News asked the Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs to comment on precisely
what Ashooh's role was, but they failed to respond.
Ashooh is pictured during her time as a "consultant" in Iraqi Kurdistan. Photo |
Academyalumni
Ashooh herself appears to have been a relatively major player in the Syrian Civil War. In
her previously mentioned Washington Post
article , she notes that her boss was a former Emirati Air Force General and that she was
flown to Istanbul in 2013 to attend an emergency meeting with leaders of the Syrian opposition,
as well as ambassadors from unnamed Arab and Western states, in order to plan a response to a
reported chemical weapons attack and to help the U.S. "coordinate with the Syrian
opposition."
At the same time as she was advising the nation on Middle Eastern affairs, the UAE was
widely accused of flying ISIS and al-Qaeda leaders into Yemen to help them intensify the
Saudi-led onslaught on the impoverished nation and of smuggling
U.S.-made weaponry -- including small arms, TOW missiles and Oshkosh fighting vehicles -- to
the jihadist groups. While Ashooh's writing is careful to maintain a distinction between the
"moderate" rebels she supports and the fundamentalist radicals she does not, it certainly is
noteworthy that the entities she worked for consistently seem to end up in league with the most
regressive forces in the region. MintPress also reached out to Reddit for comment on why
they appointed Ashooh, given her past history, and on the wider phenomenon of government
penetration of social media. The company initially promised to issue a response to the inquiry
but has not followed through with it.
Regime change is on the table for more than just one Middle Eastern nation. In a 2017
paper for the
Center for the National Interest -- a think tank established by former Republican President
Richard Nixon and the "Godfather of Neoconservatism,"
Irving Kristol -- Ashooh explores the different options for forcing regime change in Iran,
but concludes that overthrowing the "odious regime" is an impossible task right now, and
criticizes the idea as a quixotic dream.
Nevertheless, she is far from an Iran dove. An Atlantic Council report
she co-wrote insists that "Iranian interference in the Arab world must be deterred," and that
"America's friends and partners must be reassured that the U.S. opposes Iranian hegemony and
will work with them to prevent it."
Ashooh's commitment to fighting against Middle Eastern dictatorships might seem more
principled if she did not appear so enamored of the least democratic one of them all. In 2016,
she accompanied Albright and Hadley to Saudi Arabia and praised the monarchy's dynamic
leadership on the economy and its nurturing of a new generation. "It was really really exciting
to see that level of energy and the level of government support for these young people who were
interested in shaping their own futures it was just wonderful," she
said . In an
article about her experience for business news website Market Watch , she waxed
lyrical about how forward-thinking the Saudi government is and how the country has become "a
hub for the dynamic and positive change that is swelling up throughout the region." Presumably,
this excludes Yemen, a nation they were bombing
relentlessly . In a 2020
interview , Ashooh revealed that her dream job would be U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
One of her
earliest comments on her public Reddit page (made before she began working
there) is deflecting the Kingdom from criticism of its dreadful
treatment of women.
Ashooh's Reddit account, which doesn't identify her real identity, uses the moniker,
arabscarab
As part of the Atlantic Council, Ashooh was tasked with envisaging a new Middle East for the
21st century. Given her output
, it seems that she advocates for a transition towards a more privatized, free-market economic
setup, not completely unlike the shock therapy tried in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s.
"We have to "encourage states to make the reforms that move economies from state-based to ones
that support entrepreneurship, because the age of state-based economies is over," she
said at a
talk at New York University in 2015, adding:
You've got to move to support entrepreneurship in the region and let people take advantage
of the natural industrial tendencies of people in the Middle East. My God, if you've ever
been to a Turkish bazaar or a market in Cairo you know that these countries are perfectly
capable of having functioning market economies. But the state has gotten in the way.
Ashooh's LinkedIn
profile also notes that in 2010, she worked as an advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Planning "on
a variety of strategic and economic development issues," but does not go into any more detail
about what those issues were. A further biography merely states that her
consultancy agency "provid[ed] strategic and management consulting services to the Ministry of
Planning of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq." Unsurprisingly, the
organization has links to the U.S. military; the agency's lead partner being a former Army
captain.
Think Tankie
Ashooh comes from a relatively prominent New Hampshire family of Lebanese descent, the most
notable of which is probably her uncle Richard . Richard Ashooh was Donald
Trump's Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration and a former executive at weapons
manufacturer BAE Systems. Unlike her uncle, Jessica appears to lean more Democratic, having
donated money to a number of local politicians, as well as to anti-Trump Republican groups
aimed at convincing them to vote blue, such as Right Side PAC and the now infamous Lincoln
Project. However, she also appears to have great respect for many Republicans, having written
her
doctoral thesis at Oxford University on the Middle East policy of the George W. Bush
administration. She also
stated that the person she would have most liked to have met was 41st President George Bush
Senior, describing him as possessing "incredible amounts of strategy, finesse and restraint."
Thus, her political views appear to be exactly in the center of the neoliberal "
blob " in Washington.
Ashooh also worked
for the right-wing think tank the CATO Institute and is a Term Member of the more
Democratic-aligned Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR's term member program is
intended to, in its own words, "cultivate the next generation of foreign policy
leaders."
Surveillance Valley
How and why, then, did a hawkish young mandarin hothoused at elite universities and in the
halls of state power end up an executive at an anarchic messageboard site with an
anti-establishment reputation? Virtually everyone else in senior roles at Reddit has relevant
backgrounds in marketing or tech, having worked with comparable companies such as Yelp, Expedia
and Snapchat.
Tom Secker -- a journalist, podcaster and
researcher who runs SpyCulture.com ,
an online archive about government involvement in the entertainment industry -- was deeply
skeptical. "That someone whose entire career has been in international relations and foreign
affairs is now the senior policy wonk at Reddit is simply bizarre. Given her ties to the CFR,
Atlantic Council and the like, it's downright suspicious," Secker told MintPress .
Underneath the surface, however, the Atlantic Council has been rapidly expanding its
influence and control over big social media companies. In 2018, it announced that it would be
partnering with Facebook to promote trustworthy sources and derank, demote and even delete low
quality or fake news, thus effectively curating what the platform's
2.85 billion worldwide users see in their news feeds. But the effect of recent algorithmic
changes has been to throttle alternative media traffic in favor of establishment sources such
as CNN , Fox News and The New York Times . Even such more mainstream
liberal sites as Mother Jones have seen their numbers crater. Facebook later
admitted that they were directly targeting Mother Jones because of its left-leaning
content, raising the question that if such a middle-of-the-road liberal outlet was being
penalized, wasn't the collapse in traffic to more radical publications surely deliberate? Given
the Atlantic Council's funding and the identities of those on its board , their control over
social media is tantamount to state censorship on a global level.
Earlier this year, Facebook also hired NATO press officer Ben Nimmo to be its intelligence
chief, in another move that
dismayed free-speech advocates. In the past, Nimmo has identified a Welsh pensioner and an
internationally known Ukranian pianist as Russian bots, raising more questions about the
suitability of the Atlantic Council to be an arbiter of truth online.
The Facebook-Atlantic Council link mirrors that of Microsoft with
NewsGuard , a new piece of software purportedly trying to fight fake news by placing either
green shields or red warning logos, corresponding to an outlet's credibility, beside all links
in its browser, Microsoft Edge -- this credibility being decided entirely by NewsGuard itself.
Newsguard pushed Microsoft to install the software on all its products as standard. Again,
however, NewsGuard's system rated establishment websites like Fox News and CNN as
trustworthy but independent media as suspect. And again, a glance at its advisory board makes it clear that
this is a state operation. Those in key positions included George W. Bush's Secretary of
Homeland Security and former NSA and CIA Director General Michael Hayden; ex-White House
Communications Director Don Baer; and former Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Worse still, NewsGuard is also linked to a PR agency
employed in whitewashing the Saudi
government's human-rights record and its role in the carnage in Yemen.
Twitter, too, has some extremely troubling links with state power. In 2019 Gordon MacMillan,
a senior Twitter executive responsible for the Middle East region, was
outed as an active duty officer in the British Army's 77th Brigade, a unit dedicated to
online operations and psychological warfare. Far from causing a scandal, only one major U.S.
outlet even mentioned
the story, and the journalist in question resigned from the profession weeks later,
claiming the existence of a network of top-down state censors who quash stories that
threaten the power and prestige of the national security state. To this day, MacMillan remains
in his post at Twitter, strongly suggesting the social media company knew of his role before he
was hired.
Over the past few years, Twitter, Reddit and Facebook have
announced the deletion of hundreds of thousands of accounts linked to sources in Russia,
Iran, China and other enemy states,
often on the recommendation of Western governments or state-sponsored intelligence
organizations. However, they never seem willing or able to find any manipulation of their
platforms by Western governments. Thus, the upshot of this has been to slowly dissuade critics
of Western foreign policy from using their services.
"The mainstream media-politik establishment has managed to get a hold over Twitter, Facebook
and Instagram -- shadow-banning and downrating posts considered 'Russian propaganda' or
whatever other excuse they use to marginalize perspectives and content outside of the
mainstream," Secker told MintPress . "Audiences for this sort of content are
increasingly pissed off and alienated by the major social media sites."
Increasingly, unwelcome political voices are either brushed off by centrist pundits as
repeating Russian talking points or smeared as being amplified by Kremlin-based bot farms. The
popularity of movements on the left like
Black Lives Matter or the Bernie
Sanders' campaign were written off as partially linked to Russia, while others
suggested that the January 6 insurrection in Washington was essentially a Russian
operation.
The irony is that many of the wildest accusations against Putin that have fed this climate
of suspicion began life in Atlantic Council documents. For example, the organization has
published a series
of studies that suggest that virtually every European political party challenging the
neoliberal status quo in some way -- from Labour and UKIP in the U.K. to Syriza and Golden Dawn
in Greece and PODEMOS and Vox in Spain -- are secretly controlled by Russia, functioning as the
"Kremlin's Trojan Horses," in its words.
The Atlantic Council is also deeply intertwined with a U.K. government-funded organization
called the Integrity Initiative, something that purports to be a group defending democracy from
disinformation. However, in practice, it appears to be doing the opposite: planting
disinformation about politicians' supposed links to Russia in order to undermine them. The
Integrity Initiative is a government-backed cluster of journalists who operate in unison to
conduct propaganda blitzes on
unsuspecting publics. In 2018, it
launched a successful operation to prevent Colonel Pedro Baños being appointed
Spain's head of national security. Considering Baños too soft on Russia for the Atlantic
Council and other hawks' liking, the initiative sprung into action, creating a storm of protest
that led to another individual being chosen.
Reddit actually played a key role in a 2019 propaganda blitz against anti-war Labour leader
Jeremy Corbyn. A few days before the U.K.'s general election, Corbyn promoted documents leaked
on the platform that showed that Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson was negotiating with
American companies, putting much of the country's National Health Service up for sale. With
just days to go before polls opened, it could have proved a game changer. Reddit quickly came
to Johnson's rescue, however,
asserting that the documents were part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The story in
the pliant British press switched from "Boris Johnson is selling off the NHS" to "Corbyn
promotes Russian disinfo," thus greasing the skids for an easy victory for the hardline
anti-Russia Conservative Party, an outcome the hawks at the Atlantic Council were no doubt
relieved by, given Corbyn's open skepticism about war, empire and nuclear weapons. The veracity
of the documents was not challenged.
For a while
Founded in 2005, Reddit has grown to become one of the world's largest and most influential
websites. However, it began life as an anarchistic messageboard whose culture was profoundly
libertarian and anti-establishment. For years, the company's administrators took a near free
speech absolutist position. Aaron Swartz, Reddit's co-founder, was an open source hacktivist
and even attempted to download and publish the entirety of academic publisher Jstor's library.
When authorities got wind of what he was doing, they threatened him with 40 years in prison, an
action that caused him to take his own life in 2013.
Reddit's own position on free information and free speech was often so extreme it caused
huge controversy. The site became the internet's largest source of child pornography. It was
only after CNN began reporting on it to a nationwide audience that
things began to change. Other, grossly offensive communities like /r/BeatingWomen and
/r/CoonTown were also protected.
Nevertheless, the culture established by anarchistic tech bros remained for some years, with
the site resembling darker corners of the internet like 4Chan and 8Chan as much as more
family-friendly mainstream social media like Facebook.
Ashooh's arrival in 2017 coincided with a new era in the site's history. Gone were the days
of protecting communities that would bring in bad publicity. Her team quickly
brought in a new content policy and began to delete communities that violated it. Last
year, she oversaw the banning of over
2,000 communities in a single day, including /r/The_Donald, the main Donald Trump
subreddit, and /r/ChapoTrapHouse, the most active left-wing community. These decisions have
helped the money flow in; since 2017 revenue has more than tripled .
However, what has been lost across the internet is the liberatory potential of these
technologies. In the 1990s and 2000s, many predicted that the internet would usher in a new era
of egalitarianism and genuine democracy, helping even to reduce barriers and tensions between
nations. For a while, the new medium allowed political actors to challenge the status quo and
gain huge followings quickly. Alternative media was easily outperforming legacy media, and
challenging the status quo when it came to news. Seeing that, the reaction since 2016 has been
swift, as the elite have moved to retighten their grip over the means of communication.
Ashooh's jump from national security state official to Reddit Director of Policy is just one
more point of reference on that chart.
"... During the 2018 conference "Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic - and Preventing it!" Baric uses the graphics to extrapolate investment assistance on how to "make money in the next pandemic" by showing which stocks and industries soared during the Ebola crisis. ..."
"... Before pointing out that "there are real mutual funds for outbreak preparedness Baric adds that the abovementioned sectors and firms would "probably do very well." He also added "Some items are successful. "It was the same thing in 1918, with masks, and it's the same thing today." According to Baric, pandemics are periods of fortune, amid times of societal instability, there is a potential for people to achieve political, financial, and personal gain, and this will almost certainly happen. ..."
"... Baric said if one wants to make money from the pandemic then purchase stock in firms that create Lab coats and protective clothes, or firms that develop antiviral medications for that epidemic. ..."
During the 2018 conference "Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic - and
Preventing it!" Baric uses the graphics to extrapolate investment assistance on how to "make
money in the next pandemic" by showing which stocks and industries soared during the Ebola
crisis.
China's 2018 leaked video of Wuhan Institute of Virology concludes that the COVID-19
originated from China's Wuhan lab and during the 2018 conference, Dr. Ralph Baric of the Wuhan
Institute of Virology, a collaborator and gain-of-function advocate, gave attendees advice on
how to "make a profit" in the next pandemic.
Wuhan lab's researchers immediately started brainstorming ways of making money from a
pandemic. Baric shows a slide titled "Global Catastrophe: Opportunities Exist" during his 2018
conference "Imagining the Next Flu Pandemic – and Preventing it!" He uses the graphics to
extrapolate investment assistance on how to "make money in the next pandemic" by showing which
stocks and industries soared during the Ebola crisis.
Before pointing out that "there are real mutual funds for outbreak preparedness Baric
adds that the abovementioned sectors and firms would "probably do very well." He also added
"Some items are successful. "It was the same thing in 1918, with masks, and it's the same thing
today." According to Baric, pandemics are periods of fortune, amid times of societal
instability, there is a potential for people to achieve political, financial, and personal
gain, and this will almost certainly happen.
Baric said if one wants to make money from the pandemic then purchase stock in firms
that create Lab coats and protective clothes, or firms that develop antiviral medications for
that epidemic.
Hundreds of suspected members of criminal networks have been arrested by authorities around
the world after being duped into using an encrypted communications platform secretly run by the
FBI to hatch their plans for alleged crimes including drug smuggling and money laundering.
In the global sting operation dubbed "Operation Trojan Shield," an international coalition
of law-enforcement agencies led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation covertly monitored the
encrypted communications service Anom, which purported to offer a feature cherished in the
criminal underworld: total secrecy.
The sting was revealed this week in a series of news conferences by authorities in the U.S.,
Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Alleged members of international criminal organizations
adopted the platform as a means to communicate securely, unaware that authorities were covertly
monitoring 27 million messages from more than 12,000 users across more than 100 countries,
officials said.
The takedown involved more than 9,000 law-enforcement offices around the world that had
searched 700 locations in the previous 48 hours alone, U.S. and European officials said early
Tuesday. Police forces had in recent days carried out more than 800 arrests in 16 countries and
seized more than 8 tons of cocaine, 22 tons of cannabis and 2 tons of synthetic drugs, as well
as 250 firearms, 55 luxury vehicles and over $48 million in various currencies. More than 150
threats to human life were also disrupted, officials said.
In the U.S., the FBI charged 17 foreign nationals operating in places including Australia,
the Netherlands and Spain with distributing encrypted Anom communications devices, saying they
violated federal racketeering laws typically used to target organized-crime groups, officials
said. Eight of those individuals are in custody and nine remain at large, they said.
The global effort put any other companies offering such services on notice that
law-enforcement agencies world-wide consider developing and selling technology aimed at
defeating their ability to monitor and intercept communications to be unlawful""the latest
salvo in a debate unfolding globally about how to balance security and privacy on technology
platforms.
Authorities, who see encrypted platforms like Anom as providing a haven for illicit activity
beyond the reach of government monitoring, signaled that intelligence agencies and law
enforcement would aggressively seek to infiltrate platforms designed in such a way that they
can be used by terrorists and criminal gangs to evade detection.
"The immense and unprecedented success of Operation Trojan Shield should be a warning to
international criminal organizations""your criminal communications may not be secure; and you
can count on law enforcement world-wide working together to combat dangerous crime that crosses
international borders," said Suzanne Turner, the special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego
field office.
... ... ...
Trojan Shield grew from when the FBI developed a confidential human source involved in the
development of Anom and used that access to make, market and distribute the devices around the
world, according to an affidavit unsealed in U.S. federal court this week. The source, who had
been involved in selling other secure devices to criminal networks before trying to develop
Anom, agreed to cooperate with the bureau in order to reduce his or her own criminal exposure
and lessen a potential sentence, court documents say.
With the source's cooperation, the FBI and its law-enforcement partners secretly built into
Anom the ability to covertly intercept and decrypt messages. The FBI relied on the source's
relationships with criminal gangs in Australia to help distribute the first batch of devices,
with word of the service spreading organically after that, documents say.
Europol said Anom was used by more than 300 criminal groups in more than 100 countries,
including Italian organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs and international drug-trafficking
organizations. In court filings, the bureau detailed extensive conversations about narcotics
trafficking, cryptocurrency transactions, cash smuggling, corruption and other illicit activity
flowing through Anom's systems.
My good friend in Canada says that it seems to be a "BioSecurity Fascist State" forming
also. And it's not against Cuba , it's against the populace of Canada. Worse than anything in
the US. <
>
The problem with conspiracy theories (CIA invented term to whitewash CIA participation in
killing of JFK) that some of them in ten to twenty years no longer viewed as conspiracies. They
enter mainstream.
An online poll this week from Ipsos reported 15% of Americans agree that the government,
media and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Not 15% of
Republicans or conservatives, but of Americans. That's a lot.
... ... ...
America is a lonely place. When you hold to a conspiracy theory, you join a community.
You're suddenly part of something. You have new friends you can talk to on the internet ...
... One of the enduring and revealing songs of America asks "Which side are you on / Which
side are you on? / You go to Harlan County / There is no neutral there / You'll either be a
union man / Or a thug for J.H. Blair."
... ... ...
Conspiracy believers don't believe what the mainstream media tell them. Why would they?
Newsrooms are undergoing their own revolution, with woke progressives vs. journalistic
traditionalists, advocacy versus old-school news values. It is ideological. "We are here to
shape and encourage a new reality." "No, we are here to find and report the news." It is
generational: The young have the upper hand and the Slack channel. The woke are winning.
...
When you think your country has grown completely bizarre...Think of what normal human beings
have been asked to absorb the past year. The whole country was shut down and everyone was told
to stay in the house. They closed the churches, and the churches agreed. There was no school
and everyone made believe""really, we all made believe!""screens were a replacement. A bunch of
13-year-old girls in the junior high decided they were boys and started getting shots, and no
adults helped them by saying, "Whoa, slow down, this is a major life decision and you're a
kid." The school board no longer argues about transgender bathrooms, they're on to transgender
boys wanting to play on the girls team. Big corporations now tell you what you should think
about local questions, and if this offends you, they don't care. There were riots and protests
last summer and local government seemed overwhelmed.
Walmart Will Give 740,000 Employees a Free Smartphone (cbsnews.com) 37 Posted by
EditorDavid on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:39PM from the company-lines dept. "Walmart will
give
740,000 employees free Samsung smartphones by the end of the year ," reports CBS News, "so
they can use a new app to manage schedules, the company announced Thursday." The phone, the
Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro, can also be used for personal use, and the company will provide free
cases and protection plans. The phone's retail price is currently $499... Up until now,
associates at Walmart stores used handheld devices they shared to communicate, but an initial
test with employee smartphones was received well and will now be expanded upon, Walmart
said...
The company promised that it would not have access to any employee's personal data and
can "use the smartphone as their own personal device if they want, with all the features and
privacy they're used to." The test will be expanded by the end of the year, Walmart
said.
Earlier this year, Walmart announced pay increases for nearly a third of its U.S.
workforce of 1.6 million. In February, digital and store workers saw their starting hourly
rates increase from $13 to $19 depending on their location and market.Hmmm
(
Score: 3 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:48PM (
#61460698 )
Probably will be used to clock them in and out when they enter and exit the premises, and track
their movements to ensure they are working and not lollygagging. Maybe even track bio info to
adjust health insurance prices.
If you think this is just a free gift done out of generosity, you're quite naive.
Reply to This ShareNo thank you (
Score: 3 ) by RitchCraft (
6454710 ) on Sunday June 06, 2021 @07:11PM ( #61460772 ) It
would be wise for Walmart employees to put that phone in a locker on premises before leaving.
Having your corporate overlord knowing everything you do outside of work is creepy ...
peeping Tom creepy. Wal-mart states they won't collect your data but we'll be reading a news
story within two years finding out they did just that. "We're sorry for data that was
collected. It was a configuration oversight on our part. We promise to do better moving
forward." yadda, yadda, yadda.
Reply to This ShareNot surprised... (
Score: 5 , Interesting) by Pollux ( 102520 ) < speter@@@tedata...net...eg > on Sunday June 06, 2021
@07:36PM ( #61460814 )
Journal
I was talking last week with someone who works customer service at a nearby Walmart.
She told me that people are either leaving or moving up the chain, and it's hard to keep new
employees retained. She had one who was in for three days, then just went AWOL and was never
heard from again.
I asked her what starting salary was. (The Walmart's in out-state MN.) She said
$11.50.
I guess Walmart can't help but behave this way. What they should be doing is raising
salaries. Instead, they choose to offer a "perk" of a "free" phone w/ a "free" phone plan. I
say "free", because no doubt the phone will be a data goldmine for corporate. How? Let me count
the ways.
1) Track employee movements within the store;
2) Determine quantity and length of employee breaks;
3) Track employee movements outside the store;
4) Track employee searches;
5) Track employee social media posts;
6) Monitor employee spending behaviors;
7) Mine employee messages;
And so on, and so forth...And any one of these data mining operations can be used to
punish employee misbehavior, hustle Walmart services (Moneygram springs to mind), not to
mention sell to interested 3rd parties. (With Walmart commanding the largest fleet of employees
in the United States, imagine how many other companies would be willing to pay for generalized
data on employee behavior. Better yet, image how much someone would be willing to pay to
advertise directly to 1.6 million people.)
Google's critics have said for years that it should be treated like a public utility. On
Tuesday, Ohio's attorney general filed a lawsuit asking a judge to rule that the search company
is one.
The case adds to the legal woes confronting the Alphabet Inc. GOOG 0.68% subsidiary, which
also faces antitrust lawsuits from the Justice Department and a separate consortium of states
led by Colorado and Texas. The company is contending with cases in countries around the world
where its dominance as a search provider has sparked a push by regulators to corral its
power.
Amid the array of court challenges, Ohio said that it is the first state in the country to
bring a lawsuit seeking a court declaration that Google is a common carrier subject under state
law to government regulation. The lawsuit, which doesn't seek monetary damages, says that
Google has a duty to provide the same rights for advertisements and product placement for
competitors as it provides for its own services.
"When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat
everyone the same and give everybody access," said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a
Republican.
A Google spokesman said that the remedies sought in the Ohio lawsuit would worsen the
company's search results and impair businesses' ability to connect directly with customers.
"Ohioans simply don't want the government to run Google like a gas or electric company," a
spokesman said. "This lawsuit has no basis in fact or law and we'll defend ourselves against it
in court."
The FBI and Australian Federal Police
ran an encrypted chat platform and intercepted secret messages between criminal gang
members from all over the world for more than three years. From a report: Named Operation
Ironside (AFP) / Trojan Shield (FBI, Interpol) on Monday, law enforcement agencies from
Australia, Europe, and the US conducted house searches and arrested thousands of suspects
across a wide spectrum of criminal groups, from biker gangs in Australia to drug cartels across
Asia and South America, and weapons and human traffickers in Europe.
In a press conference on Monday, Australian police said the sting operation got underway
in 2018 after the FBI successfully seized encrypted chat platform Phantom Secure. Knowing that
the criminal underworld would move to a new platform, US and Australian officials decided to
run their own service on top of Anom (also stylized as AN0M), an encrypted chat platform that
the FBI had secretly gained access to through an insider. Just like Phantom Secure, the new
service consisted of secure smartphones that were configured to run only the An0m app and
nothing else.
According to a commenter at SANS "Part of the decision to stop monitoring and making arrests
was a blog posting (since deleted) detailing the behavior of the ANoM app, this March, which
didn't correctly attribute the backdoor to the FBI."
Well, now the criminals can't trust any encryption. That means that it can slow them down
quite a bit for a while.
Meanwhile most of the ransom for the pipeline ransomware is also recovered, which likely
means that it's possible to track Bitcoin.
Governments may be slow, but they can be relentless in pursuing their targets if they really
want. Re:STFU! (
Score: 4 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @03:40PM (
#61466816 )
Anyone can track Bitcoin transactions from wallet to wallet. The paydirt is that the LEOs
know which wallets to watch and can follow the trail.
Tainted Bitcoins are a big thing, and even tumbled coins just mean more tainted coins that
currency exchanges will not accept. You might be able to find an individual to trade, and maybe
an escrow service so you can do a multisig transaction so the other party doesn't rob you blind
when trading to something like XMR to the ill-gotten gains.
It was a closed-source black-box proprietary encryption system.
As we've pointed out time and again: You can't trust it if you can't check it. Your security
is totally at the mercy of the system's authors and operators.
But crooks are apparently no smarter than Pointy Haired Bosses. (Thank goodness.)
On June 6, 1968, Robert Kennedy had just won the California Democratic presidential primary,
when he was shot dead, five years after his brother. David Talbot has shown in his book
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years , published in 2007 by Simon &
Schuster, that Robert had never believed in the conclusion of the Warren Commission Report, and
that, had he succeeded in becoming the next American president, he would have done his utmost
to set up a new investigation. Whether he would have been able to get to the bottom of it is
another matter. But it is a reasonable assumption that the forces that had killed John were the
same that killed Robert on his way to reclaim the White House. After all, as Laurence Leamer
writes in Sons of Camelot : "Bobby had been the president's alter ego and protector. . .
. He had loved his brother so intensely and served him so well that within the administration
it was hard to tell where one man ended and the other began."
[1] After 1963, Robert was still his brother's continuation. He was the heir and the
avenger.
That is why I have argued before -- and I repeat in
my new book -- that the ultimate key to the JFK whodunit is in RFK's assassination, which
has a very clear, unmistakable Israeli signature. RFK's assassination is a masterwork of false
flag operation, designed by a supremely intelligent, Machiavellian, and organized cabal, the
same that orchestrated one year earlier, with Johnson's complicity, the attempted false flag
attack on the USS Liberty (watch the new groundbreaking four-part documentary film
Sacrificing
Liberty ).
What is truly extraordinary, and demonstrates an unmatched expertise in the industry of
lies, is that the conspirators succeeded to get rid of Robert Kennedy while at the same time
blaming the assassination on their enemies -- the Palestinians -- and thereby giving themselves
both an alibi and a victim's role: through RFK, Israel was the target, they claim.
Sirhan Sirhan, the "virulent anti-Semite"
Just hours after Robert's assassination, the press informed the American people, not only of
the identity of the assassin, but also of his motive, and even of his detailed biography.
[2] Twenty-four-year-old Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born in Jordan, and had moved to the
United States when his family was expelled from West Jerusalem in 1948. After the shooting, a
newspaper clipping was found in Sirhan's pocket, quoting Robert's following statement: "The
United States should without delay sell Israel the 50 Phantom jets she has so long been
promised." Handwritten notes by Sirhan found in a notebook at his home confirmed that his act
had been premeditated and motivated by his hatred of Israel.
That became the mainstream storyline from day one. Jerry Cohen of the Los Angeles
Times wrote a front page article, saying that Sirhan is "described by acquaintances as a
'virulent' anti-Israeli" (Cohen changed that into "virulent anti-Semite" in an article for the
Salt Lake Tribune ), and that: "Investigation and disclosures from persons who knew him
best revealed [him] as a young man with a supreme hatred for the state of Israel." Cohen infers
that "Senator Kennedy . . . became a personification of that hatred because of his recent
pro-Israeli statements." Cohen further revealed that, about three weeks before the shooting,
Sirhan wrote "a memo to himself" that said, "Kennedy must be assassinated before June 5, 1968,"
that is, Cohen notes, "the first anniversary of the six-day war in which Israel humiliated
three Arab neighbors, Egypt, Syria and Jordan."
[3]
After September 11, 2001, the tragedy of Robert's assassination was rewritten and installed
into the Neocon mythology of the "Clash of Civilizations" and the "War on Terror." A book
entitled The Forgotten Terrorist, by Mel Ayton (2007), purports to present "a wealth of
evidence about [Sirhan's] fanatical Palestinian nationalism," and to demonstrate that
"[Sirhan's] politically motivated act was a forerunner of present-day terrorism."
In 2008, on the occasion of the 40 th anniversary of Bobby's murder, Sasha
Issenberg of the Boston Globe recalled that the death of Robert Kennedy was "a first
taste of Mideast terror." He quotes Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz saying: "It was in some
ways the beginning of Islamic terrorism in America. It was the first shot. A lot of us didn't
recognize it at the time."
[4] That Sirhan was from a Christian family was lost on Dershowitz.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin took care to mention it
in TheForward , only to add that Islamic fanaticism ran in his veins anyway:
"But what he shared with his Muslim cousins -- the perpetrators of September 11 -- was a
visceral, irrational hatred of Israel. It drove him to murder a man whom some still believe
might have been the greatest hope of an earlier generation. . . . Sirhan hated Kennedy because
he had supported Israel."
And so, the Forward insists: "One cannot help but note the parallel between [Robert]
Kennedy's assassination and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In both tragic cases,
Arab fanaticism reared its ugly head on American soil, irrevocably changing the course of
events in this country."
[5] And the lesson: "In remembering Bobby Kennedy, let us remember not just what he lived
for, but also what he died for -- namely, the precious nature of the American-Israeli
relationship."
[6] In other words: let's propagate the narrative, for it is good for Israel.
On the fiftieth anniversary, the narrative was
well rehearsed : Robert got killed because he was "pro-Israel".
[7] Therefore his murder was a crime against Israel.
For anyone familiar with the history of the Kennedy clan, there is something odd in the
notion that the assassination of Robert Kennedy was a crime against Israel. Robert had not
been, in his brother's government, a pro-Israel Attorney General. He had infuriated Zionist
leaders by supporting an investigation led by Senator William Fulbright and the Committee on
Foreign Relations, aimed at registering the American Zionist Council as a "foreign agent",
which would had considerably hindered its efficiency.
[8]
In 1968, Robert Kennedy had not suddenly turned pro-Israel. He was simply trying to attract
Jewish votes, as everyone else. Robert's statement in an Oregon synagogue, mentioned in the May
27 Pasadena Independent Star-News article found in Sirhan's pocket, didn't exceed the
minimal requirements. Its author David Lawrence had, in another article entitled "Paradoxical
Bob," underlined how little credit should be given to such electoral promises: "Presidential
candidates are out to get votes and some of them do not realize their own inconsistencies."
[9] In fact, as Arthur Krock has noted, the supposed motive for RFK's murder is itself
paradoxical: "If this motive was his position that the United States was committed to preserve
Israel as a nation, his statement was made with more moderation than that of other important
political persons who said the same thing."
[10]
All things considered, there is no ground for believing that Robert Kennedy would have been,
as president of the U.S.A., particularly Israel-friendly.
Did Sirhan kill Robert Kennedy?
If we trust official statements and mainstream news, the assassination of Robert Kennedy is
an open-and-shut case. The identity of the killer suffers no discussion, since he was arrested
on the spot, with the smoking gun in his hand.
In reality, ballistic and forensic evidence shows that none of Sirhan's bullets hit Kennedy.
According to the autopsy report of Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Thomas Noguchi, Robert
Kennedy was hit by three bullets, while a fourth went through his coat. All these bullets were
shot from behind Kennedy: two of them under his right armpit, following an upward angle, and
the third, the fatal bullet, behind his right ear, at point blank range. Dr. Noguchi reaffirms
his conclusion in his memoirs, Coroner (1983) . Yet the sworn testimonies of
twelve witnesses established that Robert had never turned his back on Sirhan and that Sirhan
was five to six feet away from his target when he fired. Moreover, Sirhan was physically
overpowered by Karl Uecker after his second shot, and, although he continued pressing the
trigger mechanically, his revolver was not directed towards Kennedy anymore.
By tallying all the bullet impacts in the pantry, and those that wounded five people around
Kennedy, it has been estimated that at least twelve bullets were fired, while Sirhan's gun
carried only eight. On April 23, 2011, attorneys William Pepper and Laurie Dusek gathered all
this evidence and more in a 58-page file submitted to the Court of California, with a request
that Sirhan's case be reopened. They pointed out major irregularities in the 1968 trial,
notably that the serial number of Sirhan's pistol did not match the serial number of the pistol
by which were test fired the bullets compared with those extracted from Robert's brain.
[11] Pepper also provided a computer analysis of audio recordings during the shooting, made
by engineer Philip Van Praag in 2008, which confirms that two guns are heard.
[12] Paul Schrade, a Kennedy confidant who was behind Robert during the shooting and
received one of Sirhan's bullets, has long believed there was a second shooter. He
testified at Sirhan's 2016 parole hearing, and told him: "the evidence clearly shows that
you were not the gunman who shot Robert Kennedy."
[13] Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his sister Kathleen have joined Schrade and
support the call for a reinvestigation of the assassination.
[14]
The presence of a second shooter was mentioned by several witnesses and reported on the same
day by a few news outlets. There are strong suspicions that Robert's real assassin was Thane
Eugene Cesar, a security guard hired by the Hotel Ambassador, property of Zionist businessman
Myer Schine. Cesar was stuck behind Kennedy at the moment of the shooting, and some people saw
him draw his pistol. One of them, Don Schulman, positively saw him fire.
[15] Incredibly, Cesar's weapon was never examined, and he was never interrogated, even
though he did not conceal his hatred for the Kennedys.
[16]
Even if we assumed that Sirhan did kill Robert Kennedy, a second aspect of the case raises
question: Sirhan seemed to be in a state of trance during the shooting, and of disorientation
just after. More importantly, Sirhan has always claimed that he has never had any recollection
of his act. Fifty years after the facts, he continues to declare: "I was told by my attorney
that I shot and killed Senator Robert F. Kennedy and that to deny this would be completely
futile, [but] I had and continue to have no memory of the shooting of Senator Kennedy." He also
claims to have no memory of "many things and incidents which took place in the weeks leading up
to the shooting."
[17] Some repetitive lines written of a notebook found in Sirhan's bedroom, which Sirhan
recognizes as his own handwriting but does not remember writing, are reminiscent of automatic
writing: there is a whole page of fifteen repetitions of "RFK must die, Robert F. Kennedy
must be assassinated, assassinated, assassinated, assassinated," suddenly turning to "I
have never heard please pay to the order of of of of of."
[18]
Psychiatric expertise, including lie-detector tests, has confirmed that Sirhan's amnesia is
not faked. Therefore, experts in hypnosis and mental manipulation believe that Sirhan has been
submitted to hypnotic programming. "It was obvious that he had been programmed to kill Robert
Kennedy and programmed to forget that he had been programmed," stated Dr. Robert Blair.
[19] In 2008, Harvard University professor Daniel Brown, a noted expert in hypnosis and
trauma memory loss, interviewed Sirhan for a total of 60 hours, and concluded that Sirhan, whom
he classified among "high hypnotizables," acted involuntarily under the effect of hypnotic
suggestion: "His firing of the gun was neither under his voluntary control, nor done with
conscious knowledge, but is likely a product of automatic hypnotic behavior and coercive
control." During his sessions with Dr. Brown, Sirhan could remember having been accompanied by
an attractive woman, before suddenly finding himself at a shooting range with a weapon he did
not know. According to Brown's report, "Mr. Sirhan did not go with the intent to shoot Senator
Kennedy, but did respond to a specific hypnotic cue given to him by that woman to enter 'range
mode,' during which Mr. Sirhan automatically and involuntarily responded with a 'flashback'
that he was shooting at a firing range at circle targets." Later, attorney William Pepper found
an entry in the police file that showed that, just days before the assassination, Sirhan had
visited a firing range, accompanied by an unknown instructor.
[20]
Mossad, Mental control, and false-flag terrorism
We know that in the 1960s, American military agencies were experimenting on mental control.
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, son of Hungarian Jews, directed the infamous CIA MKUltra project, which,
among other things, were to answer questions such as: "Can a person under hypnosis be forced to
commit murder?" according to a declassified document dated May 1951.
[21] As Larry Romanoff has pointed out , MKUltra was an
overwhelmingly Jewish enterprise, with people like Dr. John Gittinger, Harris Isbell, James
Keehner, Lauretta Bender, Albert Kligman, Eugene Saenger, Chester Southam, Robert V. Lashbrook,
Harold Abramson, Charles Geschickter, and Ray Treichler.
[22]
In his book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted
Assassinations (2018), Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman has revealed that, in May 1968, the
month preceding Robert Kennedy's assassination, the Israeli Military Intelligence (AMAN) was
planning to assassinate Yasser Arafat by hypnotically programming a Palestinian. The idea was
proposed by a Navy psychologist named Binyamin Shalit, who claimed that, "if he was given a
Palestinian prisoner -- one of the thousands in Israeli jails -- with the right
characteristics, he could brainwash and hypnotize him into becoming a programmed killer. He
would then be sent across the Jordan, join the Fatah there, and, when the opportunity arose, do
away with Arafat." The proposal was approved. Shalit selected a 28-year-old Palestinian from
Bethlehem, whom he deemed easily suggestionnable. The operation failed, but it proves that, in
1968 precisely, Israel was practicing a method of assassination identical to the one used
against Robert Kennedy.
[23]
Moreover, manipulating Palestinians to make them commit crimes, or committing crimes and
blaming Palestinians for them, bears the signature of Israel. According to former Mossad agent,
Victor Ostrovsky, in 1991 elements of the Mossad were plotting an attempt on the life of
President George H. W. Bush. Bush had resisted an unprecedented pro-Israel lobbying campaign
that called for $10 billion to help Jews immigrate from the former Soviet Union to Israel,
complaining in a televised press conference on September 12 that "one thousand Jewish lobbyists
are on Capitol Hill against little old me."
[24] Worse, there was his policy of pressuring Israel to the negotiating table at the
Madrid Conference by freezing their loan guarantees. Israel had had enough of him. The plan was
to leak words to the Spanish police that terrorists were on their way, kill Bush and, in the
midst of the confusion, release three Palestinians captured earlier and kill them on the spot.
[25]
It is well known that Israel has a long history and a grand expertise in false flag
terrorism. A report of the U.S. Army School for Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), quoted by the
Washington
Times on September 10, 2001, described the Israeli Intelligence agency as: "Wildcard.
Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a
Palestinian/Arab act."
[26] That statement was made public on the day before 9/11.
The pattern dates from before the creation of the Jewish State, with the bombing of the King
David Hotel, headquarter of the British authorities in Jerusalem, in the morning of July 22,
1946. Six terrorists of the Irgun dressed as Arabs brought 225 kg of explosives hidden in milk
churns into the building. When a British officer became suspicious and gunshot ensued, the
Irgun members fled after igniting the explosives. The explosion killed 91 people, mostly
British, but also 15 Jews.
The strategy was repeated in Egypt during the summer of 1954, with Operation Susannah. The
goal was to compromise the British's withdrawal from the Suez Canal, demanded by Colonel Abdul
Gamal Nasser with support from President Eisenhower. Egyptian Jews trained in Israel bombed
several British targets, then put the blame on the Muslim Brotherhood. The accidental
detonation of an explosive device allowed the exposure of the conspiracy, which led to the
"Lavon Affair", from the name of the Defense Minister who was held responsible.
There are more of the same stories in Gordon Thomas's Gideon's Spies: the Secret History
of the Mossad (2009).
[27] By definition, false-flagged Arab terrorism is only exposed when it fails, and we
cannot know how many such operations have been set up by the Mossad. But from the revelations
of Ronen Bergman in Rise and Kill First, Sirhan sure looks like a typical made-in-Mossad
Palestinian patsy.
There are still, of course, unanswered questions, such as: How did Sirhan find himself in
the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel at midnight on June 6, 1968, with a pistol in his
pocket? Sirhan himself declared it was by accident, or by mistake, but then he doesn't remember
much of that evening. Another question is: Why did Kennedy, after finishing his speech, exit
the ballroom through the kitchen pantry, instead of walking through the crowd of his
supporters, as he usually did? To this question, there is an answer: according to a campaign
volunteer present at the scene and interviewed by Michael Piper, it was Frank Mankiewicz who
insisted that Robert go this way.
[28] Now, isn't it awkward that Mankiewicz had started his career in public relations "as
civil rights director for the western branch of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith," as
he mentions in his autobiography.
[29] (The ADL, remember, was founded in 1913 by the B'nai B'rith to defend the
convicted child rapist and murderer Leo Frank .)
[30] In 1991, Mankiewicz handled publicity for Oliver Stone's film JFK .
Bobby Kennedy was killed by a single shot to the back of his head. The shot was fired at a
range close enough to singe the hair on the back of his neck.
Sirhan was of course standing IN FRONT of Bobby, firing BLANKS. The reason for firing
those blanks was to cover up the sound of the OTHER gun.
The ONLY person who could have fired such a shot was one of the FBI "bodyguards".
Bobby was murdered because he had a good chance to be elected Prez o' US. And if Bobby
EVER became Prez, he would have re-opened the investigation of the murder of his brother,
JFK. So RFK was killed by the same people who killed JFK.
Although NO ONE talks about the "plane crash" that killed JFK, Jr., that was also an
assassination for the purpose of ensuring that NO ONE EVER made an honest investigation of
the murder of JFK, Sr.
My understanding is that Maheu was the conduit between the CIA and the Mafia
in at least the JFK assassination. Mafia includes both Italian and Jewish/Israeli groupings.
But the order and primary coverup was from the CIA (or acting former CIA). You don't usually
hear about military generals, but they had to be in on it too. LBJ was clearly not a
mastermind though must have been involved to a degree. Same with Hoover.
I was a college student in LA at the time of the RFK assassination,
not that it makes me an expert, but it made me aware then and concerned and
investigating ever since.
I have read all of Laurent Guyenot's works and most of it was powerfully eye opening,
especially about the history and "purpose" of the Old Testament Bible. I am grateful to him
for this work.
He seems to me on less solid ground when it comes to who can control things in the US.
m.k.ultra/cia/mossad cannot be separated. creating unwitting assassins is a major part of
why the program was created. sirhan sirhan's handler "the girl in the polka dot dress" was
seen by 25 witnesses but dismissed as a figment of the imagination of an overwrought campaign
worker who claimed she heard her say "we shot him, we shot him". the camel faced woman of the
joe/camel administration refused to allow sirhan sirhans parole even though bobby kennedy jr.
requested it. guess that handlers have to have to watch out for each other.
And he attacked the Israel A-bomb program and wanted to end the Federal Reserve, that
financial yeshiva. They were lining up to top him, then his brother.
I agree that it's a mystery he is still alive. Other than it would need someone in the DOJ
with the determination to see that he was carefully assassinated. You know there was a recent
attempt on his life, don't you? Right around the time Epstein died. As long as Barr was head
of DOJ I was extremely concerned about Sirhan.
Of course, originally they expected him to be executed and the California had the audacity
to eliminate the death penalty.
To understand Robert Kennedy's support for Israel, we have to enter the mental world of
post World War Two. Robert wanted Israel' s nuclear programme ended because the Cold War
required a bi polar between nuclear powers, US and USSR. A nuclear Israel would make Israel a
super power as has indeed happened. Otherwise Robert, a war vet, loved Israel as an epitome
of frontier America. Also Israel's social programme as contrasted with America's predatory
capitalism greatly appealed. Robert's visit to Israel and deprecation of the Arabs fitted
that era. The Arabs and Islam were not popular as backward peoples except for some Arabian
Nights nostalgia. I have read a book that Iranian agents were also involved in his
assassination. This was the era of the Shah who was covertly allied to Israel
I once read of a security expert who had been around during the 60's who believed RFK's
assassination was almost inevitable as RFK routinely disregarded security protocols regarding
his exposure to large crowds.
That others were involved is a given and the 'system' has protected them for decades,
just as it protected the assassins who killed JFK.
Since a president Robert would have been determined to get to who killed his brother, it
is practically a foregone conclusion they were both killed by the exact same crew.
Sirhan Sirhan wasn't a Muslim he was Christian Greek Orthodox variety. In 1948 When he was
4 years old armed Israeli troops cane to his family's 10 room house and gave them one hour to
pack up what they could carry and get out. His father was fired from his city of Jerusalem
water department job as soon as Zionists bribed blackmailed and threatened United Nations
delegates to declare Israel a nation.
The family went to live in a Greek Orthodox pilgrim hostel. 7 kids mostly boys youngest 4
how'd you like that. One of the boys was killed in a Zionist terrorist bombing at a crowded
rush hour intersection about a year before. The Church refugee program brought the Sirhan to
Pasadena Ca. They bought a house and settled in.
Having been kicked out of his home at age 4 by armed troops Sirhan was righteously
resentful of the Zionists. He grew more anti Zionist at Pasadena community college because of
pro Israel Jewish professors.
Kennedy ran in the California primary. He promised arms and support to Israel. So Sirhan
shot him.
Robert Kennedy was as anti White as his brothers. He lobbied for the 1965 and 1968
unlimited non White immigration and affirmative action bills. He marched at the head of MLK's
funeral, practically shoving the widow out of the way for photo opportunities. He also
massively supported the Hispanic cause and was one of the first anti White Democrats to lobby
for Hispanics to get affirmative action benefits. Although that didn't happen until 1970. By
the time JFK was elected, Robert was a hard core anti White.
He's dead. Sirhan Sirhan confessed to shooting Kennedy because of Kennedy's support for
Israel and the Israelis who stole his family's home.
If you're pro Israel and love the American politicians who give more to Israel than to the
American taxpayers, you would have lived Kennedy at the time.
If you're anti White and pro black and brown you should mourn Kennedy as an anti White,
pro black and brown pro black on White crime and pro affirmative action discrimination
against White Americans dead martyr.
If you are pro White and against affirmative action discrimination against White Americans
you are a misinformed ignoramus if you mourn Robert Kennedy.
If you are pro Palestinian and anti the Israeli property grabbers you are a misinformed
ignoramus if you mourn the pro Israel Kennedy.
All 3 Kennedy brothers were anti White. March 1961 less than 2 months after he became
President JFK issued executive order 10925 I believe it was mandating that all federal
agencies SHALL take affirmative action to hire blacks over Whites.
Ted lobbied for the 64 civil rights for all but Whites act, the 65 unlimited non White
immigration act. The 68 affirmative action act and every anti White law and judicial
appointment in his long career.
And Robert disdained Whites and slobbered over MLK Jesse Jackson Cesear Chavez and every
black and brown activist in existence. And he was a vociferous supporter of Israel and the
anti White Jewish organizations in America.
Someone shot him. Sirhan Sirhan claimed he shot Robert Kennedy. Robert was as much an
enemy of Whites and Palestinians as Johnson was.
Had Robert Kennedy become President he would have been as anti White as Nixon or
worse.
Sirhan Sirhan had an excellent motive; revenge. The Jews didn't. Robert Kennedy was a
puppet of jews both in domestic ( anti White) and foreign affairs.
Robert Kennedy was pro school de segregation and bussing , pro affirmative action, pro
Hispanic pro black soft on black crime and anti White.
Any White man who mourns the Kennedys is anti White negro lover and Zionist.
Israel does indeed have a history of unmasked false-flag operations: the Lavon Affair, the
attack on the Liberty, their proven awareness beforehand that the 9/11 attacks were going to
happen, where, and how.
So unless we're to assume they're invariably incompetent, it follows that there must also
have been false-flag operations that were never uncovered. Like, say, the assassination of
Robert Kennedy. But this is hardly proof that this was in fact what happened. It merely
demonstrates that it's not inconceivable.
Then there's Sirhan Sirhan himself. What was he like? Had he had similar episodes in the
past: committing violent acts and having no memory of them? Was he deranged in some way that
suggested such behavior was possible? We know, for example, that the young Adolf Hitler was
transported when he saw Wagner's Rienzi -- the story of a man who rises to become the
savior of his people. Obviously, this prefigured Hitler's later career. Was there anything in
Sirhan's life that prefigured an assassination attempt?
Was there other evidence that Sirhan was worked up about Kennedy and Israel? Surely there
should have been more than reading a clipping that Kennedy was for an arms sale. What was he
saying to people? What had he been reading? Was Sirhan even aware of who was running for
President?
If Israel was in fact behind the killing, how were they sure they would benefit? Was it,
in June, clear that if Kennedy lived, he would get the nomination and beat the Republican
nominee, and that if he did, that he would be dramatically worse for Israel than the apparent
alternatives at that point?
Sirhan doesn't remember anything (because of his hypnosis), therefore he is not
dangerous.
The Jews made a mistake by choosing a Christian Palestinian as their "typical
fanatical Muslim terrorist", but they hoped the gullible American public would not notice,
which of course was the case.
' On February 10, 2016, at his 15th parole hearing, he [Sirhan] was denied
parole again. One of Sirhan's shooting victims from that night, Paul Schrade, aged 91 at the
time of the hearing, testified in his support, stating his belief that a second shooter
killed Kennedy and that Sirhan was intended to be a distraction from the real gunman by an
unknown conspiracy '
Kennedy had been shot three times. One bullet was fired at a range of perhaps 1 inch (3
cm) and entered behind his right ear, dispersing fragments throughout his brain.[41] The
other two entered at the rear of his right armpit; one exited from his chest and the other
lodged in the back of his neck.[4
Wiki
Five other people were wounded by the "blanks" that SS fired after RFK had been shot.
Five other people were wounded: William Weisel of ABC News, Paul Schrade of the United
Automobile Workers union, Democratic Party activist Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein of the
Continental News Service, and Kennedy campaign volunteer Irwin Stroll.[24]
@Triteleia Laxa g seems to point in a certain obvious direction, but Bergman's recent
book also includes a major new revelation. At exactly the same moment that Sirhan was being
wrestled to the floor of the Ambassador Hotel ballroom in Los Angeles, another young
Palestinian was undergoing intensive rounds of hypnotic conditioning at the hands of Mossad
in Israel, being programmed to assassinate PLO leader Yasir Arafat; and although that effort
ultimately failed, such a coincidence seems to stretch the bounds of plausibility.
Had a sinister grouping discovered how to create hypnotised assassins a half a century ago,
there is no interest of theirs that they would not be able to achieve by now.
Yet the group you accuse has not even been able to deal with the Palestinians. In the
meantime, countless peace settlements, successful ethnic cleansings, large scale massacres, and
more, have taken place around the world, ignored and/or forgiven.
My impression is that you paint the Israelis/"deep state neocons"/Jews as Saturday morning
cartoon villains. They are all powerful, utterly ruthless, constantly scheming, and yet somehow
never achieve more than the most ordinary of their aims. This is too funny.
And that made them bold enough to pin 9/11 on a bunch of Islamic terrorists. The system is
superb; when discussing 9/11 in 2011 with one of my American cousins, he looked at me like I
had come from Mars when I asked him about the the third building (7) falling down without being
hit. His answer was " what building you are talking about". That got me curious and I
researched to find out if my cousin's reaction was a rarity and to my big surprise it turned
out that up to that date only 25% of the American public were aware of the fall of three
buildings all in all. Free US media indeed!
@Godfree Roberts After all, whatever else you might say of him, long-reigning Erdogan, is
the poster boy for leader hubris yet he's still there.
Though if you make too many powerful enemies eventually someone is going to take a shot.
Think of it as the coalition of the willing.
We all crave and grow comfortable with the coutours of what did and didn't happen as if was
ordained. Thus Kerry made fun of W. Bush for sitting in that elementary school classroom on
live TV as if, regardless of what he (W) and those protecting him knew, he was safe as a
kitten.
I've mentioned the Vincennes/Lockerbie as elucidating in terms of the functionality of the
resolve. With the US and Iran, the two indisputable moving parties, conspiring to make Libya
the dirty dog.
Richard Nixon, via Henry Kissinger, was very good for the Israelis. Would mystery votes in
Illinois and Texas happen for Bobby like they did for John? We will never know. Joe Kennedy was
a ruthless, power driven man, which is why the Kennedy mystique has always been both amusing
and a mystery. Perhaps Joe could have pulled another presidential election off for another
son.
According to campaign workers at the scene, RFK wanted to exit the ballroom through the
crowd, but his press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz insisted that he leave through the pantry,
having arranged a midnight press briefing in a nearby room. Kennedy was told that he needed to
hold the briefing so that he could appear on the morning news the following day. Oddly,
Mankiewicz later denied having played this role, contradicting the accounts of Kennedy's staff.
As Guyenot points out, Mankiewicz was formerly a publicist for the Zionist ADL. Collins Piper,
by the way, goes off on a tangent suggesting that Iran somehow had a hand in the RFK
assassination.
Another loose end is of course the girl with the polka dot dress. Who was she? where did she
go? Here is one authors novel assessment: http://www.surfs-up.net/Downloads/RFK.pdf If
this writer is correct, the ADL also played a role in the silencing of the polka dot dress
girl.
@Triteleia Laxa ts. "Confused" was an oft repeated adjective to describe the victims state
of mind.
Vice made a documentary years ago that can easily be found on the internet, "worlds scariest
drug" was titled if memory serves me. Here's also some safety advice for travelers to Colombia,
proof of how common this is:
Now could someone be ordered to kill someone else while high on scopolamine? I have read of
no reports. But one thing is clear, a hypnotized like state – in which victims blindly
follow directions from strangers – can be induced chemically.
Walmart
Will Give 740,000 Employees a Free Smartphone (cbsnews.com) 37 Posted by EditorDavid on
Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:39PM from the company-lines dept. "Walmart will give
740,000 employees free Samsung smartphones by the end of the year ," reports CBS News, "so
they can use a new app to manage schedules, the company announced Thursday." The phone, the
Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro, can also be used for personal use, and the company will provide free
cases and protection plans. The phone's retail price is currently $499... Up until now,
associates at Walmart stores used handheld devices they shared to communicate, but an initial
test with employee smartphones was received well and will now be expanded upon, Walmart
said...
The company promised that it would not have access to any employee's personal data and
can "use the smartphone as their own personal device if they want, with all the features and
privacy they're used to." The test will be expanded by the end of the year, Walmart
said.
Earlier this year, Walmart announced pay increases for nearly a third of its U.S.
workforce of 1.6 million. In February, digital and store workers saw their starting hourly
rates increase from $13 to $19 depending on their location and market.Hmmm
(
Score: 3 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:48PM (
#61460698 )
Probably will be used to clock them in and out when they enter and exit the premises, and track
their movements to ensure they are working and not lollygagging. Maybe even track bio info to
adjust health insurance prices.
If you think this is just a free gift done out of generosity, you're quite naive.
Reply to This ShareNo thank you (
Score: 3 ) by RitchCraft (
6454710 ) on Sunday June 06, 2021 @07:11PM ( #61460772 ) It
would be wise for Walmart employees to put that phone in a locker on premises before leaving.
Having your corporate overlord knowing everything you do outside of work is creepy ...
peeping Tom creepy. Wal-mart states they won't collect your data but we'll be reading a news
story within two years finding out they did just that. "We're sorry for data that was
collected. It was a configuration oversight on our part. We promise to do better moving
forward." yadda, yadda, yadda.
Reply to This ShareNot surprised... (
Score: 5 , Interesting) by Pollux ( 102520 ) < speter@@@tedata...net...eg > on Sunday June 06, 2021
@07:36PM ( #61460814 )
Journal
I was talking last week with someone who works customer service at a nearby Walmart.
She told me that people are either leaving or moving up the chain, and it's hard to keep new
employees retained. She had one who was in for three days, then just went AWOL and was never
heard from again.
I asked her what starting salary was. (The Walmart's in out-state MN.) She said
$11.50.
I guess Walmart can't help but behave this way. What they should be doing is raising
salaries. Instead, they choose to offer a "perk" of a "free" phone w/ a "free" phone plan. I
say "free", because no doubt the phone will be a data goldmine for corporate. How? Let me count
the ways.
1) Track employee movements within the store;
2) Determine quantity and length of employee breaks;
3) Track employee movements outside the store;
4) Track employee searches;
5) Track employee social media posts;
6) Monitor employee spending behaviors;
7) Mine employee messages;
And so on, and so forth...And any one of these data mining operations can be used to
punish employee misbehavior, hustle Walmart services (Moneygram springs to mind), not to
mention sell to interested 3rd parties. (With Walmart commanding the largest fleet of employees
in the United States, imagine how many other companies would be willing to pay for generalized
data on employee behavior. Better yet, image how much someone would be willing to pay to
advertise directly to 1.6 million people.)
The problem with conspiracy theories (CIA invented term to whitewash CIA participation in
killing of JFK) that some of them in ten to twenty years no longer viewed as conspiracies. They
enter mainstream.
An online poll this week from Ipsos reported 15% of Americans agree that the government,
media and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Not 15% of
Republicans or conservatives, but of Americans. That's a lot.
... ... ...
America is a lonely place. When you hold to a conspiracy theory, you join a community.
You're suddenly part of something. You have new friends you can talk to on the internet ...
... One of the enduring and revealing songs of America asks "Which side are you on / Which
side are you on? / You go to Harlan County / There is no neutral there / You'll either be a
union man / Or a thug for J.H. Blair."
... ... ...
Conspiracy believers don't believe what the mainstream media tell them. Why would they?
Newsrooms are undergoing their own revolution, with woke progressives vs. journalistic
traditionalists, advocacy versus old-school news values. It is ideological. "We are here to
shape and encourage a new reality." "No, we are here to find and report the news." It is
generational: The young have the upper hand and the Slack channel. The woke are winning.
...
When you think your country has grown completely bizarre...Think of what normal human beings
have been asked to absorb the past year. The whole country was shut down and everyone was told
to stay in the house. They closed the churches, and the churches agreed. There was no school
and everyone made believe""really, we all made believe!""screens were a replacement. A bunch of
13-year-old girls in the junior high decided they were boys and started getting shots, and no
adults helped them by saying, "Whoa, slow down, this is a major life decision and you're a
kid." The school board no longer argues about transgender bathrooms, they're on to transgender
boys wanting to play on the girls team. Big corporations now tell you what you should think
about local questions, and if this offends you, they don't care. There were riots and protests
last summer and local government seemed overwhelmed.
"... After Epstein's 2019 arrest, it emerged that Epstein had "directed" Bill Gates to donate $2 million to the MIT lab in 2014. Epstein also allegedly secured a $5 million donation from Leon Black for the lab. Ito was forced to resign his post as the lab's director shortly after Epstein's 2019 arrest. ..."
"... Epstein appears to have become involved with Brockman as early as 1995, when he helped to finance and rescue a struggling book project that was managed by Brockman. ..."
"... According to former Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe, Bill Clinton had been the main focus of Epstein's sexual blackmail operation in the 1990s, a claim supported by Epstein victim testimony and Epstein's intimate involvement with individuals who were close to the former president at the time. ..."
"... Despite tensions arising from the Clinton administration's pursuit of Microsoft's monopoly in the late 1990s, the Gates and Clinton relationship had thawed by April 2000, when Gates attended the White House " Conference on the New Economy ." Attendees besides Gates included close Epstein associate Lynn Forester (now Lady de Rothschild) and then secretary of the treasury Larry Summers, who has also come under fire for his Epstein ties. ..."
"... Huffington Post ..."
"... Huffington Post ..."
"... Black was deeply tied to Epstein, even having Epstein manage his personal "philanthropic" foundation for several years, even after Epstein's first arrest. ..."
"... Indeed, 2013 was also the year that the Gates mansion systems engineer, Rick Allen Jones, began to be investigated by Seattle police for his child porn and child rape collection, which contained over six thousand images and videos. Despite the gravity of his crime, when Jones was arrested at the Gates mansion a year later, he was not jailed after his arrest but was merely ordered "to stay away from children," according to local media reports. From Melinda's perspective, this scandal, combined with Bill Gates's growing association with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein may have posed a threat to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's reputation, well before Epstein's 2019 arrest. ..."
"... Evening Standard ..."
"... The likely reason for the continued cover-up of the true extent of Epstein's ties to Gates has much more to do with Gates's company Microsoft than with Bill Gates himself. While it is now permissible to report on ties that discredit Gates's personal reputation, the information that could tie his relationship with Epstein and the Maxwells to Microsoft has been omitted. ..."
"... If, as the Evening Standard ..."
"... This is hardly an isolated incident, as similar efforts have been made to cover up (or memory hole) the ties of Epstein and the Maxwells to other prominent Silicon Valley empires, such as those led by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk . One key reason for this is that the Epstein network's blackmail operation involved not only sexual blackmail but electronic forms of blackmail ..."
"... That Isabel and Christine Maxwell were able to forge close business ties with Microsoft after having been part of the front company that played a central role in PROMIS-related espionage and after explicitly managing their subsequent companies with the admitted intention to "rebuild" their spy father's work and legacy, strongly points to the probability of at least some Microsoft products having been compromised in some fashion, likely through alliances with Maxwell-run tech companies. The lack of mainstream media concern over the documented ties of the Epstein network to other top Microsoft executives of the past, such as Nathan Myhrvold, Linda Stone, and Steven Sinofsky, makes it clear that, while it may be open season on the relationship between Bill Gates and Epstein, such is not the case for Microsoft and Epstein. ..."
"... The ties of Epstein and the Maxwells to Silicon Valley, not just to Microsoft, are part of a broader attempt to cover up the strong intelligence component in the origin of Silicon Valley's most powerful companies. Much effort has been invested in creating a public perception that these companies are strictly private entities despite their deep, long-standing ties to the intelligence agencies and militaries of the United States and Israel . The true breadth of the Epstein scandal will never be covered by mainstream media because so many news outlets are owned by these same Silicon Valley oligarchs or depend on Silicon Valley for online reader engagement. ..."
"... Perhaps the biggest reason why the military/intelligence origins and links to the current Silicon Valley oligarchy will never be honestly examined, however, is that those very entities are now working with breakneck speed to usher in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which would make artificial intelligence, automation, mass electronic surveillance, and transhumanism central to human society. One of the architects of this "revolution," Klaus Schwab, said earlier this year that rebuilding and maintaining trust with the public was critical to that project. However, were the true nature of Silicon Valley, including its significant ties to serial child rapist and sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein and his network, to emerge, the public's trust would be significantly eroded, thus threatening what the global oligarchy views as a project critical to its survival ..."
"... What a menace these philanthropic organizations are to the ordinary and lowly. These billionaire creeps never stop plotting and figuring out even more ways to stomp on people and push their creepy agendas, which remain forever hidden. ..."
It further appears that Bill Gates, then head of Microsoft, made a personal investment in
CommTouch at the behest of Isabel Maxwell. In an October 2000
article published in the Guardian , Isabel "jokes about persuading Bill Gates to
make a personal investment" in CommTouch sometime during this period.
The Guardian article then oddly notes, regarding Isabel Maxwell and Bill Gates:
"In a faux southern belle accent, [Isabel] purrs: 'He's got to spend $375m a year to keep
his tax-free status, why not allow me to help him.' She explodes with laughter."
Given that individuals as wealthy as Gates cannot have "tax-free status" and that this
article was published soon after the creation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
Isabel's statements suggest that it was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which
manages the foundation's endowment assets, that made this sizable investment in CommTouch.
Furthermore, it is worth highlighting the odd way in which Isabel describes her dealings
with Gates ("purring," speaking in a fake Southern accent), describing her interactions with
him in a way not found in any of her numerous other interviews on a wide variety of topics.
This odd behavior may be related to Isabel's previous interactions with Gates and/or the
mysterious relationship between Gates and Epstein during this time.
Isabel Maxwell as
CommTouch President
After 2000, CommTouch's business and clout expanded rapidly, with Isabel Maxwell
subsequently crediting investments from Microsoft, led by Gates, and Paul Allen for the
company's good fortune and the success of its effort to enter the US market. Maxwell, as quoted
in the 2002 book Fastalliances , states that Microsoft viewed CommTouch as a key "distribution
network," adding that "Microsoft's investment in us put us on the map. It gave us instant
credibility, validated our technology and service in the marketplace." By this time,
Microsoft's ties to CommTouch had deepened with new partnerships, including
CommTouch's hosting of Microsoft Exchange .
Though Isabel Maxwell was able to secure lucrative investments and alliances for CommTouch
and saw its products integrated into key software and hardware components produced and sold by
Microsoft and other tech giants, she was unable to improve the company's dire financial
situation, with CommTouch netting a loss of
$4.4 million in 1998 and similar losses well into the 2000s, with net losses totalling $24 million in 2000 (just one
year after the sizable investments from Microsoft, Paul Allen and Gates). The losses continued
even after Isabel formally left the company and became president emeritus in 2001. By 2006, the
company was over $170 million in debt. Isabel Maxwell left her position at CommTouch in 2001
but for years retained a sizable amount of CommTouch stock valued at the time at around $9.5
million . Today, Isabel Maxwell is, among other things, a " technology pioneer " of the World
Economic Forum.
Another indication of a relationship between Epstein and Gates prior to 2001 is Epstein's
cozy ties with Nathan Myhrvold, who joined Microsoft in the 1980s and became the company's
first chief technology officer in 1996. At the time, Myhrvold was one of Gates's closest
advisers, if not the closest, and cowrote Gates's 1996 book, The Road Ahead , which
sought to explain how emerging technologies would impact life in the years and decades to
come.
In December of the same year that he became Microsoft's CTO, Myhrvold traveled on Epstein's
plane from Kentucky to New Jersey, and then again in January 1997 from New Jersey to Florida.
Other passengers accompanying Myhrvold on these flights included Alan Dershowitz and "GM,"
presumably Ghislaine Maxwell. It is worth keeping in mind that this is the same period when
Gates had a documented relationship with Ghislaine's sister Isabel.
In addition, in the 1990s, Myhrvold traveled with Epstein in Russia alongside Esther Dyson , a digital
technology consultant who has been called "the most influential woman
in all the computer world." She currently has close ties to Google as well as the DNA testing
company 23andme and is a member of and
agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum. Dyson later stated that the meeting with
Epstein had been planned by Myhrvold. The meeting appears to have taken place in 1998, based on
information posted on Dyson's social media accounts.
One photo features Dyson and Epstein, with a time stamp indicating April 28, 1998, posing
with Pavel Oleynikov, who appears to have been
an employee of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center. In that photo, they are standing in front of
the house of the late Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet nuclear scientist and dissident, who is
alleged to have had ties to US intelligence.
Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, were supporters of Zionist causes
.
The photos were taken in Sarov, where the Russian Federal Nuclear Center is based. That same
day, another photo was taken that
shows Epstein inside a classroom full of teens, apparently also in Sarov, given the time
stamp.
Another Dyson
image , one without a visible time stamp but with a caption stating the photo was taken "at
Microsoft Russia in Moscow" in April 1998, shows Nathan Myhrvold. Dyson's caption further
states, "This was the beginning of a three-week trip during which Nathan and a variety of
hangers-on (including a bodyguard) explored the state of post-Soviet science." Epstein appears
to be one of the "hangers-on," given the photographs, dates, and the described purpose of the
trip.
Myhrvold and Epstein apparently had more in common than an interest in Russian scientific
advances. When Myhrvold left Microsoft to cofound Intellectual Ventures,
Vanity Fair reported that he had received Epstein at the firm's office with "young
girls" in tow who appeared to be "Russian models." A source close to Myhrvold and cited by
Vanity Fair claimed that Myhrvold spoke openly about borrowing Epstein's jet and
staying at his homes in Florida and New York. Vanity Fair also noted that Myhrvold has
been accused of having sex with minors provided by Epstein by none other than Harvard law
professor Alan Dershowitz, who stands accused of the same crime and who had previously flown
with Myhrvold on Epstein's private plane.
In addition, a former colleague of Myhrvold's at Microsoft later developed her own ties to
Epstein. Linda Stone , who joined
Microsoft in 1993 and worked directly under Myhrvold, eventually became a Microsoft vice
president. She introduced Epstein to Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab after Epstein's first arrest.
"He has a tainted past, but Linda assures me that he's awesome," Ito later said in an email to
three MIT staffers. In Epstein's famous little black book, there are several phone numbers for
Stone, and her emergency contact is listed as Kelly Bovino, a former model and alleged Epstein
coconspirator. After Epstein's 2019 arrest, it emerged that Epstein
had "directed" Bill Gates to donate $2 million to the MIT lab in 2014. Epstein also
allegedly secured a $5 million donation from Leon Black for the lab. Ito was forced to resign
his post as the lab's director shortly after Epstein's 2019 arrest.
Nathan Myhrvold , Linda Stone , Joi Ito, Esther Dyson , and Bill Gates were all members of the Edge
Foundation community (edge.org website), alongside several other Silicon Valley icons. Edge,
which is described as an exclusive organization of intellectuals " redefining who and what we are ," was created by John
Brockman, a self-described "cultural impresario" and noted literary agent. Brockman is best
known for his deep ties to the art world in the late 1960s, though lesser
known are his various "management consulting" gigs for the Pentagon and White House during
that same period. Edge, which
the Guardian once called "the world's smartest website," is an exclusive online
symposium affiliated with what Brockman calls "the Third Culture." Epstein appears to have
become involved with Brockman as early as 1995, when he helped to finance and rescue a
struggling book project that was managed by Brockman.
Edge, however, is more than just a website. For decades, it was also instrumental in
bringing together tech executives, scientists who were often Brockman's clients, and Wall
Street financiers through its Millionaires' Dinner, first held in 1985. In 1999, this event
rebranded as the Billionaires' Dinner, and Epstein became intimately involved in these affairs
and the Edge Foundation itself. Epstein was photographed attending several of the dinners as
was Sarah Kellen, Ghislaine Maxwell's chief "assistant" and coconspirator in the
Epstein/Maxwell-run sex trafficking and blackmail scheme.
Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft and
Jeffrey Epstein at the 2000 Edge Billionaires' Dinner Source: https://www.edge.org/igd/1200
From 2001 to 2017, Epstein
funded $638,000 out of a total of $857,000 raised by Edge. During this period, there were
several years when Epstein was Edge's only donor. Epstein stopped giving in 2015, which was
incidentally the same year that Edge decided to discontinue its annual Billionaires' Dinner
tradition. In addition, the only award Edge has ever given out, the $100,000 Edge of
Computation prize, was awarded in 2005 to Quantum computing pioneer David Deutsch -- it was
funded entirely by Epstein. A year before he began donating heavily to Edge, Epstein had
created the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation to "fund and support cutting edge science around the
world."
Since the Epstein scandal, regular attendees of the Billionaires' Dinner, sometimes called
the Edge annual dinner, have referred to the event as an "influence operation." If one follows
the money, it appears it was an influence operation largely benefitting one man, Jeffrey
Epstein, and his network. The evidence points toward Myhrvold and Gates as being very much a
part of that network, even before Epstein's involvement in Edge increased
significantly.
It is worth exploring the ties between the "philanthropic" endeavors of Bill Gates and Bill
Clinton in the early 2000s, particularly given Epstein's and Ghislaine Maxwell's ties to the
Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative during that period. According to
former Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe, Bill Clinton
had been the main focus of Epstein's sexual blackmail operation in the 1990s,
a claim supported by Epstein victim testimony and Epstein's intimate involvement with
individuals who were close to the former president at the time.
Bill Gates at the White
House Conference on the New Economy in 2000, Source: LA Times
Despite tensions arising from the Clinton administration's pursuit of Microsoft's
monopoly in the late 1990s, the Gates and Clinton relationship had thawed by April 2000, when
Gates attended the White House " Conference on
the New Economy ." Attendees besides
Gates included close Epstein associate Lynn Forester (now Lady de Rothschild) and then
secretary of the treasury Larry Summers, who has also come under fire for his Epstein
ties. Another attendee was White House chief of staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty, whose special
assistant Mark Middleton met with Epstein
at least three times at the Clinton White House. Middleton was fired after press reports
surfaced detailing his ties to illegal donations linked to foreign governments that had been
made to Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. Another participant in the conference was Janet
Yellen, Biden's current Secretary of the Treasury.
Gates spoke at a conference panel entitled "Closing the Global Divide: Health, Education and
Technology." He discussed how the mapping of the human genome would result in a new era of
technological breakthroughs and discussed the need to offer internet access to everyone to
close the digital divide and allow the "new" internet-based economy to take shape. At the time,
Gates was backing a
company , along with American Telecom billionaire Craig McCaw, that hoped to establish a
global internet service provider monopoly through a network of low-orbit satellites. That
company, Teledesic, shut down between 2002 and 2003 and is credited as being the
inspiration for Elon Musk's Starlink.
Bill Clinton and Bill Gates entered the world of philanthropy around the same time, with the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launching in 2000 and the Clinton Foundation, in 2001. Not
only that but Wired described the
two foundations as being "at the forefront of a new era in philanthropy, in which decisions --
often referred to as investments -- are made with the strategic precision demanded of business
and government, then painstakingly tracked to gauge their success."
Other media outlets, however, such as the Huffington
Post , challenged that these foundations engaged in "philanthropy" and asserted that
calling them such was causing "the rapid deconstruction of the accepted term." The
Huffington Post further noted that the Clinton Global Initiative (part of the Clinton
Foundation), the Gates Foundation, and a few similar organizations "all point in the direction
of blurring the boundaries between philanthropy, business and non-profits." It noted that this
model for "philanthropy" has been promoted by the World Economic Forum and the Milken
Institute. It is also worth noting that several of Epstein's own "philanthropic" vehicles were
also created just as this new era in philanthropy was beginning.
The Milken Institute was founded by
Michael Milken , the notorious Wall Street "junk bond king," who was indicted on 98 counts
of racketeering and securities fraud in 1989. He served little prison time and was ultimately
pardoned by Donald Trump. Milken committed his crimes while working alongside Leon Black
and Ron Perelman at Drexel
Burnham Lambert before its scandalous collapse. Black was deeply tied to Epstein, even
having Epstein manage his personal
"philanthropic" foundation for several years, even after Epstein's first arrest.
Perelman was a major Clinton donor whose 1995 fundraiser for the then president was attended by
Epstein and whose companies offered jobs to Webster Hubbell and Monica Lewinsky after their
respective scandals in the Clinton administration. Like Gates, Milken has transformed his
reputation for ruthlessness in the corporate world into one of a "prominent philanthropist."
Much of his "philanthropy" benefits the Israeli military and illegal Israeli settlements in
occupied Palestine.
Years after creating their foundations, Gates and Clinton discussed how they have "long
bonded over their shared mission" of normalizing this new model of philanthropy. Gates
spoke to
Wired in 2013 about "their forays into developing regions" and "cites the close
partnerships between their organizations." In that interview, Gates revealed that he had met
Clinton before he had become president, stating, "I knew him before he was president, I knew
him when he was president, and I know him now that he's not president."
Also in that interview, Clinton stated that after he left the White House he sought to focus
on two specific things. The first is the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which he
stated exists "thanks largely to funding from the Gates Foundation," and the second is the
Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), "where I try to build a global network of people to do their
own thing."
The Clinton Health Access Initiative first received an $11
million donation from the Gates Foundation in 2009. Over the last twelve years, the Gates
Foundation has donated more than $497 million to CHAI. CHAI was initially founded in 2002 with
the mission of tackling HIV/AIDS globally through "strong government
relationships" and addressing "market inefficiencies." The Gates Foundation's significant
donations, however, began not long after CHAI's expansion
into malaria diagnostics and treatments. Notably, in 2011, Tachi Yamada, the former president
of the Gates Foundation's Global Health program, joined CHAI's board alongside Chelsea
Clinton.
Bill Gates and Bill Clinton at the annual Clinton Global Initiative in 2010
Regarding the CGI, Epstein's defense lawyers argued in
court in 2007 that Epstein had been "part of the original group that conceived of the
Clinton Global Initiative," which was first launched in 2005. Epstein's lawyers described the
CGI as a project "bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement
innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges." The Gates Foundation
gave the CGI a total of $2.5 million between 2012 and 2013 in addition to its massive donations
to the CHAI and an additional $35 million to the Clinton Foundation itself. In addition to the
Gates Foundation donations, Gates's Microsoft has been intimately involved in other
"philanthropic" projects backed by Clinton.
In addition to these ties,
Hillary Clinton established a partnership between the Clinton Foundation and the Gates
Foundation in 2014 as part of the Clintons' No Ceilings initiative. That partnership sought to
"gather and analyze data about the status of women and girls' participation around the world"
and involved the two foundations working "with leading technology partners to collect these
data and compile them." Months before the partnership was announced, Gates and Epstein met for
dinner and discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy, according to the
New York Times . During Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful run for president in 2016,
both Bill and Melinda Gates were on her
short list as potential options for vice president.
In addition, Epstein attempted to become involved in the Gates Foundation directly, as seen
by his efforts to convince the Gates Foundation to partner with JP Morgan on
a multibillion-dollar "global health charitable fund" that would have resulted in hefty
fees paid out to Epstein, who was very involved with JP Morgan at the time. Though that fund
never materialized, Epstein and Gates did discuss Epstein becoming involved in Gates's
philanthropic efforts. Some of these contacts were not reported by the mainstream press until
after the Bill and Melinda Gates divorce announcement. Yet, as mentioned, it was known that
Epstein had "directed" Gates to donate to at least one organization -- $2 million in 2014 to
the MIT Media Lab.
Recent revelations about Gates and Epstein meetings that took place between 2013 and 2014
have further underscored the importance Epstein apparently held in the world of billionaire
"philanthropy," with Gates reportedly claiming that Epstein was
his "ticket" to winning a Nobel Prize.
Norwegian media, however, reported in October 2020 that Gates and Epstein had met the Nobel
Committee chair, which failed to make a splash in international media at the time. It is worth
asking if Epstein managed to arrange such meetings with other individuals who also coveted
Nobel Prizes and if any such individuals later received those prizes. If Epstein had such
connections, it is unlikely that he would use them only once in the case of Bill Gates, given
the vastness of his network, particularly in the tech and science worlds.
The year 2013 is also when Bill
and Melinda Gates together met with Epstein at his New York residence, after which Melinda
allegedly began asking her soon-to-be ex-husband to distance himself from Epstein. While the
stated reason for this, in the wake of the Gateses' divorce announcement, was that Melinda was
put off by Epstein's past and his persona, it could potentially be related to other concerns
about Melinda's reputation and that of the foundation that shares her name.
Indeed, 2013 was also the year that the Gates mansion systems engineer, Rick Allen
Jones, began to be investigated by Seattle police for his child porn and child rape collection,
which contained over six thousand images and videos. Despite the gravity of his crime, when
Jones was
arrested at the Gates mansion a year later, he was not jailed after his arrest but was
merely ordered "to stay away from children," according to local media reports. From Melinda's
perspective, this scandal, combined with Bill Gates's growing association with convicted
pedophile Jeffrey Epstein may have posed a threat to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's
reputation, well before Epstein's 2019 arrest.
2013 was also the year that the Maxwells become involved in the Clinton Foundation. That
year, Ghislaine Maxwell's TerraMar Project, which officially supported UN Sustainable
Development Goals as they relate the world's oceans,
made a $1.25 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of an effort to
form a Sustainable Oceans Alliance. TerraMar shut down shortly after Epstein's 2019
arrest.
Isabel Maxwell and Al Seckel at the World Economic Forum's 2011 Annual Meeting
Notably, Ghislaine's TerraMar Project was in many ways the successor to Isabel Maxwell's
failed Blue World Alliance, which was also ostensibly focused on the world's oceans. Blue World
Alliance was set up by Isabel and her now deceased husband Al Seckel, who had hosted a
"scientific conference" on Epstein's island. The Blue World Alliance also went under the name
Globalsolver Foundation, and Xavier Malina, Christine Maxwell's son, was listed as
Globalsolver's liaison to the Clinton Foundation. He was previously an intern at the Clinton
Global Initiative.
Malina
later work ed in the Obama administration at the Office of White House Personnel. He now
works for Google. It is also worth noting that during this same period, Isabel Maxwell's son,
Alexander Djerassi ,
was chief of staff at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in the Hillary Clinton–run State
Department.
While the Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation intermingled, and the latter had ties
to Epstein and Maxwell, it also appears that Epstein had significant influence over two of the
most prominent science advisers to Bill Gates over the last fifteen years -- Melanie Walker and
Boris Nikolic.
A screenshot from a 2019 presentation Melanie Walker gave for Rockefeller
Foundation, where she is a fellow. Source: YouTube
Melanie Walker , now a celebrated neurosurgeon, met Jeffrey Epstein in 1992 soon after she
graduated from college, when he offered her a Victoria's Secret modelling job. Such offers were
often made by Epstein and his accomplices when recruiting women into his operation and it is
unclear if Walker ever actually worked as a model for the Leslie Wexner-owned company. She then
stayed at a New York apartment building associated with Epstein's trafficking operations during
visits to New York, but it is unclear how long she stayed there or at other Epstein-owned
properties. After she graduated from medical school in 1998, she became Epstein's science
adviser for at least a year. By 1999, she had grown so close to Prince Andrew that she
attended
a Windsor Castle birthday celebration hosted by the Queen along with Epstein and Ghislaine
Maxwell. During this period, Melanie appears on Epstein's flight logs under her birth name , Melanie
Starnes , though it looks like "Starves" on the flight logs.
The close relationship between Prince Andrew and Melanie Walker came under scrutiny after
Epstein's former housekeeper at the Zorro Ranch property, Deidre Stratton,
stated in an interview that Prince Andrew had been "given" a "beautiful young neurosurgeon"
while he stayed at Epstein's New Mexico property. Given that only one neurosurgeon was both
close to Prince Andrew and a part of Epstein's entourage at the time, it seems highly likely
that this woman "gifted" to Andrew was Melanie Walker. According to Stratton, Andrew "kept
company" with this woman for three days. The arrangement was set up by Epstein, who was not at
the property at the time. The exact timing of the stay is uncertain, but it likely took place
between 1999 and 2001.
"At the time, Jeffrey had this, she supposedly was a neurosurgeon, quite young, beautiful,
young and brilliant, and she stayed in the home with him At one point we had all these
different teas and you could pick the teas that you wanted and she asked me to find one that
would make Andrew more horny.
I'm guessing she understood her job was to entertain him because I guess, the fear, I
don't know; the fear would be that Andrew would say, "No I didn't really find her that
attractive." . . . He would tell Jeffrey that and then she would be on the ropes.
I'm guessing that, another theory is, that Jeffrey probably had her on retainer and she
knew what her job would be, should be, to make these people happy. . . . Sex was all they
thought about. I mean, I know for sure that Jeffrey would ideally like three massages a
day."
Sometime later, Walker moved to Seattle and began living with then Microsoft executive
Steven Sinofsky, who now serves as a
board partner at the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz. Andreesen Horowitz notably
backs Carbyne911, the Israel intelligence-linked precrime start-up funded by Epstein and his
close associate, former prime minister of Israel Ehud Barak, as well as another Israeli
intelligence-linked tech company led by Barak,
called Toka . Toka recently won contracts with the governments of Moldova, Nigeria, and
Ghana through the World Bank, where Melanie Walker is currently a director and a former special
adviser to its president. It is unclear when, how and under what circumstances Walker met
Sinofsky.
After moving to Seattle to be with Sinofsky and after a brief stint as a "practitioner in
the developing world" in China with the World Health Organization, Walker was hired as a senior
program officer by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006. Given that the main feature
of Walker's resume at the time was having been a science adviser to another wealthy
"philanthropist," Jeffrey Epstein, her hire by the Gates Foundation for this critical role
further underscores how Bill Gates, at the very least, not only knew who Epstein was but knew
enough about his scientific interests and investments to want to hire Walker. Walker went on to
become deputy director for Global Development as well as a deputy director of Special
Initiatives at the foundation. According to
the Rockefeller Foundation , where she is a fellow, Walker later advised Gates on issues
pertaining to neurotechnology and brain science for Gates's
secretive company bgC3 , which Gates
originally registered as a think tank under the name Carillon Holdings. According to
federal filings,
bgC3's focus areas were "scientific and technological services," "industrial analysis and
research," and "design and development of computer hardware and software."
During her time at the Gates Foundation, Walker introduced Boris Nikolic, Gates's science
adviser, to Epstein. Today, Melanie Walker is the cochair of the World Economic Forum's Global
Future Council on Neurotechnology and Brain Science, having previously been named a WEF Young
Global Leader. She also advises the World Health Organization, which is closely linked to Bill
Gates's "philanthropy."
At the WEF, Walker wrote an article in 2016 entitled "
Healthcare in 2030: Goodbye Hospital, Hello Home-spital ," in which she discusses how
wearable devices, brain-machine interfaces, and injectable/swallowable robotic "medicines" will
be the norm by 2030. Years before COVID-19 and the Great Reset–inspired efforts to change
health care in just this way, Walker wrote that while the dystopian scenario she was painting
"sounds crazy . . . most of these technologies are either almost ready for prime time, or in
development." Of course, a lot of those technologies took shape thanks to the patronage of her
former bosses, Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Gates.
In the case of Boris Nikolic, after being introduced to Epstein through Walker, he
attended
a 2011 meeting with Gates and Epstein where he was photographed alongside James Staley,
then a senior JP Morgan executive, and Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and a
close Epstein associate. Nikolic was chief adviser for science and technology to Bill Gates at
the time, advising both the
Gates Foundation and bgC3. According to the mainstream narrative, this is supposed to be the
first time that Gates and Epstein had ever met. In addition, this may have been when Epstein
pitched the joint Gates Foundation–JP Morgan "global health charitable fund."
The 2011
meeting at Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan mansion attended by James E. Staley, Larry Summers,
Jeffery Epstein, Bill Gates and Boris Nikolic
In 2014, Nikolic " waxed
enthusiastic " about Epstein's supposed penchant for financial advice ahead of a public
offering for a gene-editing company that Nikolic had
a $42 million stake in . Notably, both Nikolic and Epstein were clients of the same group
of bankers at JP Morgan, with Bloomberg later reporting that Epstein regularly helped those
bankers attract wealthy new clients.
In 2016, Nikolic cofounded Biomatics capital, which invests in health-related
companies at "the convergence of genomics and digital data" that are "enabling the development
of superior therapeutics, diagnostics and delivery models." Nikolic founded Biomatics with
Julie Sunderland, formerly the director of the Gates Foundation's Strategic Investment
Fund.
At least three of the companies backed by Biomatics -- Qihan Biotech , eGenesis , and
Editas -- were cofounded by George Church, a Harvard geneticist with deep ties to Epstein
and also closely associated with the Edge Foundation. Biomatics investment in Qihan Biotech is
no longer listed on the
Biomatics website. Church's Qihan Biotech seeks to produce human tissues and organs inside pigs
for transplantation into humans, while eGenesis seeks to genetically modify pig organs for use
in humans. Editas produces CRISPR gene-editing "medicines" and is also backed by the Gates
Foundation as well as Google Ventures.
After Epstein's death in 2019, it was revealed that Nikolic had been named the "successor
executor" of Epstein's estate, further suggesting close ties to Epstein despite Nikolic's
claims to the contrary. After details of Epstein's will were made public, Nikolic did not sign
a form indicating his willingness to be executor and
did not ultimately serve in that role.
Despite the relatively abrupt shift in the mainstream media regarding what is acceptable to
discuss regarding the Jeffrey Epstein–Bill Gates relationship, many of these same media
outlets refuse to acknowledge much of the information contained in this investigative report.
This is particularly true in the case of the Evening Standard article and Bill Gates's
odd relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell's sister Isabel and CommTouch, the company Isabel
previously led.
The likely reason for the continued cover-up of the true extent of Epstein's ties to
Gates has much more to do with Gates's company Microsoft than with Bill Gates himself. While it
is now permissible to report on ties that discredit Gates's personal reputation, the
information that could tie his relationship with Epstein and the Maxwells to Microsoft has been
omitted.
If, as the Evening Standard reported, Epstein did make millions out of his
business ties with Gates prior to 2001 and if Gates's ties to Isabel Maxwell and the Israeli
espionage–linked company CommTouch were to become public knowledge, the result could
easily be a scandal on a par with the PROMIS software affair. Such a disclosure could be very
damaging for Microsoft and its partner the World
Economic Forum , as Microsoft has become a key player in the WEF's Fourth Industrial
Revolution initiatives that range from digital identity and vaccine passports to efforts to
replace human workers with artificial intelligence.
There are clearly powerful actors with a vested interest in keeping the Epstein-Gates
narrative squarely focused on 2011 and later -- not necessarily to protect Gates but more
likely to protect the company itself and other top Microsoft executives who appear to have been
compromised by Epstein and others in the same intelligence-linked network.
This is hardly an isolated incident, as similar efforts have been made to cover up (or
memory hole) the ties of Epstein and the Maxwells to other prominent Silicon Valley empires,
such as those led by
Jeff Bezos and
Elon Musk . One key reason for this is that the Epstein network's blackmail operation
involved not only sexual blackmail but electronic forms of blackmail , something used to
great effect by Robert Maxwell on behalf of Israeli intelligence as part of the PROMIS
operation. Given its nature, electronic forms of blackmail through illegal surveillance or
backdoored software can be used to compromise those in power with something to hide, but who
were uninclined to engage in the exploitation of minors, such as those abused by Epstein.
That Isabel and Christine Maxwell were able to forge close business ties with Microsoft
after having been part of the front company that played a central role in PROMIS-related
espionage and after explicitly managing their subsequent companies with the admitted intention
to "rebuild" their spy father's work and legacy, strongly points to the probability of at least
some Microsoft products having been compromised in some fashion, likely through alliances with
Maxwell-run tech companies. The lack of mainstream media concern over the documented ties of
the Epstein network to other top Microsoft executives of the past, such as Nathan Myhrvold,
Linda Stone, and Steven Sinofsky, makes it clear that, while it may be open season on the
relationship between Bill Gates and Epstein, such is not the case for Microsoft and
Epstein.
The ties of Epstein and the Maxwells to Silicon Valley, not just to Microsoft, are part
of a broader attempt to cover up the strong intelligence component in the origin of Silicon
Valley's most powerful companies. Much effort has been invested in creating a public perception
that these companies are strictly private entities despite their deep, long-standing ties to
the intelligence agencies and militaries of the United
States and
Israel . The true breadth of the Epstein scandal will never be covered by mainstream media
because so many news outlets are owned by these same Silicon Valley oligarchs or depend on
Silicon Valley for online reader engagement.
Perhaps the biggest reason why the military/intelligence origins and links to the
current Silicon Valley oligarchy will never be honestly examined, however, is that those very
entities are now working with breakneck speed to usher in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,
which would make artificial intelligence, automation, mass electronic surveillance, and
transhumanism central to human society. One of the architects of this "revolution," Klaus
Schwab, said earlier this year that rebuilding and maintaining trust with the public was
critical to that project. However, were the true nature of Silicon Valley, including its
significant ties to serial child rapist and sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein and his network, to
emerge, the public's trust would be significantly eroded, thus threatening what the global
oligarchy views as a project critical to its survival .
I'm always impressed with the vigorous detail and documentation in your articles. What
a menace these philanthropic organizations are to the ordinary and lowly. These billionaire
creeps never stop plotting and figuring out even more ways to stomp on people and push their
creepy agendas, which remain forever hidden.
"... Through a collaboration with Danish intelligence, the United States has conducted targeted espionage against senior politicians and officials in Norway, Sweden, Germany and France. That was one of the conclusions in an explosive report made by four employees of the Danish intelligence service (FE), according to Danmarks Radio (DR). ..."
"... Last year, NRK reported that the Danish-American spy cooperation was aimed at targets in Norway, but it was then unknown who the surveillance was aimed at. The new information indicates that the extent of espionage against Norway was far greater than previously known. ..."
Through a collaboration with Danish intelligence, the United States has conducted targeted espionage against senior politicians
and officials in Norway, Sweden, Germany and France. That was one of the conclusions in an explosive report made by four employees
of the Danish intelligence service (FE), according to Danmarks Radio (DR).
NRK mentions the Danish public broadcaster's findings as part of an international collaboration with Danmarks Radio, SVT, NDR,
WDR, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Le Monde.
Over several months, DR has met nine people with access to classified information from the intelligence service. All information
in the case has been confirmed to DR by at least two, often several, independent sources.
Last year, NRK reported that the Danish-American spy cooperation was aimed at targets in Norway, but it was then unknown
who the surveillance was aimed at. The new information indicates that the extent of espionage against Norway was far greater than
previously known.
NRK and DR do not know which Norwegian politicians and officials have been subjected to targeted espionage, but as one of DR's
sources says:
- It would not have been interesting for an intelligence service to spy on municipal politicians.
There are reasons to be skeptical. After decades of stonewalling on the issue, suddenly
American military chiefs appear to be giving credence to claims of UFOs invading Earth.
Several viral video clips purporting to show
extraordinary flying technology have been "confirmed" by the Pentagon as authentic. The
Pentagon move is unprecedented.
The videos of the Unidentified Flying Objects were taken by U.S. air force flight crews or
by naval surveillance and subsequently "leaked" to the public. The question is: were the
"leaks" authorized by Pentagon spooks to stoke the public imagination of visitors from space?
The Pentagon doesn't actually say what it believes the UFOs are, only that the videos are
"authentic".
A Senate intelligence committee is to receive a report
from the Department of Defense's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force next month.
That has also raised public interest in the possibility of alien life breaching our skies
equipped with physics-defying technology far superior to existing supersonic jets and
surveillance systems.
Several other questions come to mind that beg skepticism. Why does the phenomenon of UFOs or
UAP only seem to be associated with the American military? This goes back decades to the
speculation during the 1950s about aliens crashing at Roswell in New Mexico. Why is it that
only the American military seems privy to such strange encounters? Why not the Russian or
Chinese military which would have comparable detection technology to the Americans but they
don't seem to have made any public disclosures on alien encounters? Such a discrepancy is
implausible unless we believe that life-forms from lightyears away have a fixation solely on
the United States. That's intergalactic American "exceptionalism" for you!
Also, the alleged sightings of UFOs invariably are associated with U.S. military training
grounds or high-security areas.
Moreover, the released videos that have spurred renewed public interest in UFOs are always
suspiciously of poor quality, grainy and low resolution. Several researchers, such as Mick
West, have cogently debunked
the videos as optical illusions. That's not to say that the U.S. air force or naval personnel
were fabricating the images. They may genuinely believe that they were witnessing something
extraordinary. But as rational optics experts have pointed out there are mundane explanations
for seeming unusual aerial observations, such as drones or balloons drifting at high speed in
differential wind conditions, or by the crew mistaking a far-off aircraft dipping over the
horizon for an object they believe to be much closer.
The military people who take the videos in good – albeit misplaced – faith about
what they are witnessing are not the same as the military or intelligence people who see an
opportunity with the videos to exploit the public in a psychological operation.
Fomenting public anxieties, or even just curiosity, about aliens and super-technology is an
expedient way to exert control over the population. At a time when governing authorities are
being questioned by a distrustful public and when military-intelligence establishments are
viewed as having lost a sense of purpose, what better way to realign public respect by getting
them to fret over alien marauders from whom they need protection?
There is here a close analogy to the way foreign nations are portrayed as adversaries and
enemies in order to marshal public support or least deference to the governing establishment
and its military. We see this ploy played over and over again with regard to the U.S. and
Western demonization of Russia and China as somehow conveying a malign intent towards Western
societies. In other words, it's a case of Cold War and UFOs from the same ideological
launchpad, so to speak, in order to distract public attention from internal problems.
However, more worrying still is that there is a dangerous reinforcing crossover of the two
propaganda realms. The fueling of UFO speculation is feeding directly into
speculation that U.S. airspace is being invaded by high-tech weapons developed by Russia or
China.
U.S. lawmakers are demanding answers from the Pentagon about whether the aerial "encounters"
are advanced weaponry from foreign enemies who are surveilling the American homeland at will.
Some U.S. air force aviators have recently expressed to the
media a feeling of helplessness in the face of seeming superior technology.
At a time of heightened animosity towards Russia and China and febrile talk among Pentagon
chiefs about the
possibility of all-out war, it is not difficult to imagine, indeed it is disturbingly easy
to imagine, how optical illusions about alien phenomena could trigger false alarms attributed
to Russian or Chinese military incursions.
The stoking of UFO controversy appears to be a classic psyops perpetrated by U.S. military
intelligence for the objective of population control. Its aim is to corral the citizenry under
the authority of the state and for them to accept the protector function of "our" military. The
big trouble is that the psyops with aliens are, in turn, risking the exacerbation of fears and
tensions with Russia and China.
With all the Pentagon-assisted chatter, it is more likely that an F-18 squadron could
mistake an errant weather balloon on the horizon for an alien spacecraft. And amid our new Cold
War tensions, it is but a small conceptual step to further imagine that the UFO is not from
outer space but rather is a Russian or Chinese hypersonic cruise missile heading towards the
U.S. mainland.
Money quite from comments: " more importantly it is devastating information about the dishonesty of our government. What have we
come to? What recourse is available?"
The man cast as a linchpin of debunked Trump-Russia collusion theories is breaking his silence to vigorously dispute the U.S.
government's effort to brand him a Russian spy and put him behind bars.
In an exclusive interview with RealClearInvestigations, Konstantin Kilimnik stated, "I have no relationship whatsoever to any
intelligence services, be they Russian or Ukrainian or American, or anyone else."
Konstantin Kilimnik: Decries the U.S. government's "senseless and false accusations." AP Photo
Kilimnik, a longtime employee of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, spoke out in response to an explosive
Treasury Department statement declaring that he
had "provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy" during the 2016 election.
That press release, which announced an array of sanctions on Russian nationals last month, also alleged that Kilimnik is a "known
Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf."
Treasury 's
claim came shortly after two other accusatory U.S. government statements about the dual Ukrainian-Russian national. In March,
a U.S. Intelligence Community
Assessment accused Kilimnik of being a "Russian influence agent" who meddled in the 2020 campaign to assist Trump's reelection.
A month earlier, an FBI
alert offered $250,000 for information leading to his arrest over a 2018 witness tampering charge in Manafort's shuttered Ukraine
lobbying case, which was unrelated to Russia, collusion, or any elections.
Treasury provided no evidence for its claims, which go beyond the findings of the two most extensive Russiagate investigations:
the 448-page report issued in 2019 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the 966-page report issued in August 2020 by the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence.
Treasury has declined all media requests for elaboration on how it reached conclusions that those probes did not. Two unidentified
officials
told NBC News that U.S. intelligence "has developed new information" about Kilimnik "that leads them to believe " (emphasis
added) that he passed on the polling data to Russia. But these sources "did not identify the source or type of intelligence that
had been developed," nor "when or how" it was received.
"Nobody has seen any evidence to support these claims about Kilimnik," a congressional source familiar with the House and Senate's
multiple Russia-related investigations told RCI.
Adam Schiff: Treated the Treasury claim about Kilimnik as the Trump-Russia smoking gun. "That's what most people would call collusion,"
he said. (Al Drago/Pool via AP)
Despite the absence of evidence, the Treasury press release's one-sentence claim about Kilimnik has been widely greeted as the
Trump-Russia smoking gun. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC that Treasury's
assertion about Kilimnik proved that Russian intelligence was "involved in trying to help Trump win in that [2016] election. That's
what most people would call collusion."
Speaking to RCI in fluent English from his home in Moscow, Kilimnik, 51, described these U.S. government assertions as "senseless
and false accusations."
His comments are backed up by documents, some previously unreported, as well as by Rick Gates, a longtime Manafort associate and
key Mueller probe cooperating witness. (Gates pleaded guilty to making a false statement and to failing to register as a foreign
agent in connection to his lobbying work in Ukraine.) The evidence raises doubts about new efforts to revive the Trump-Kremlin collusion
narrative by casting Kilimnik as a central Russian figure.
"They needed a Russian to investigate 'Russia collusion,' and I happened to be that Russian," Kilimnik said.
Highlights from the interview and RCI's related reporting:
Kilimnik denies passing 2016 polling data to Russian intelligence, or any Russian for that matter. Instead, Kilimnik says
he shared publicly available, general information about the 2016 American presidential race to Ukrainian clients of Manafort's
in a bid to recover old debts and drum up new business. Gates told RCI that the Mueller team "cherry-picked" his testimony about
Kilimnik to spread a misleading, collusion-favorable narrative. The U.S. government has never publicly produced the polling data
at issue, nor any evidence that it was shared with Russia.
Despite his centrality to the Trump-Russia saga, Kilimnik says no U.S. government official has ever tried get in touch with
him. "I never had a single contact with [the] FBI or any government official," Kilimnik says.
Kilimnik shared documents that contradict the Special Counsel's effort to prove that he has Russian intelligence "ties." Photos
and video of his Russian passport and a U.S. visa in his name, shared with RCI , undermine the Mueller report's claim that Kilimnik
visited the United States on a Russian "diplomatic passport" in 1997. To judge from the images, he travelled on a civilian
passport and obtained a regular U.S. visa. The Mueller team has never produced the "diplomatic passport."
Kilimnik denies traveling to Spain to meet Manafort in 2017. If true, this would undercut the Mueller team's claim that Manafort
lied in denying such a meeting. That denial was used to help secure a 2019 court ruling that Manafort breached a cooperation agreement.
The Special Counsel never furnished evidence for the alleged Madrid encounter.
While the Treasury Department and Senate Intelligence Committee claim that Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer, no
U.S. security or intelligence agency has adopted this characterization.
Kilimnik has never been charged with anything related to espionage, Russia, collusion, or the 2016 election. Instead, the
Mueller team indicted Kilimnik on witness-tampering charges in a case pertaining to Manafort's lobbying work in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, t he FBI's $250,000 bounty for Kilimnik is larger than most rewards it offers for the capture of violent fugitives,
including those accused of child murder .
Reviving the Polling Data Conspiracy Theory
Kilminik has provided an inviting target for proponents of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories. He was born in 1970 in Ukraine when
it was part of the Soviet Union, and later worked for Paul Manafort as a translator and aide there. This background makes him one
of the few people in the broad Trump 2016 campaign orbit to possess a Russian passport.
To this Mueller and others have added a series of ambiguous and disputed allegations to say that the FBI "assesses" him to "have
ties to Russian intelligence." This characterization, first made in a 2017 court filing, quickly transmogrified into a presumed fact
of the collusion narrative.
Rather than prosecute Manafort for any crime related to Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, the Mueller team instead pursued
him on financial and lobbying charges involving his pre-Trump stint as a political consultant in Ukraine. In 2018, it accused Kilimnik
of seeking to pressure two "potential witnesses" by sending them text messages about Manafort's Ukraine lobbying work.
As the Russia probe came to a close without a single indictment related to a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy, the Mueller team used Kilimnik
to suggest collusion without formally alleging it.
In January 2019, the Mueller team accused Manafort of breaching their cooperation agreement by lying about his interactions with
his Russian employee. Topping the list were alleged false statements about
sharing election
polling data with Kilimnik in 2016.
Andrew Weissmann: Despite this lead Mueller prosecutor's suggestion otherwise, the Mueller report "did not identify evidence of a
connection between Manafort's sharing polling data and Russia's interference in the election," as the report itself stated. NYU Law
"This goes to the larger view of what we think is going on, and what we think is the motive here," lead prosecutor Andrew Weissmann
told Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC. "This goes, I think, very much to the heart of what the
special counsel's office is investigating."
Weissmann's musings became collusion fodder. Media pundits and influential Democrats, namely Congressional intelligence leaders
Schiff and Mark Warner, speculated that Kilimnik shared Trump campaign polling data with Russian intelligence officers as they allegedly
worked to turn the election in Trump's favor. "This appears as the closest we've seen yet to real, live, actual collusion," Warner
told CNN . "Clearly, Manafort was trying to collude
with Russian agents."
But soon after, the Mueller team quietly undercut Weissmann's "larger view" and the conspiratorial innuendo that it had fueled.
One month after igniting the frenzy about the polling data, Weissmann submitted a
heavily
redacted court filing that
walked back some of his
claims. The following month, the Special Counsel's final report acknowledged that its musings and speculations about Kilimnik could
not be corroborated. The Mueller team not only "did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort's sharing polling data
and Russia's interference in the election," as the report stated, but also "could not assess what Kilimnik (or others he may have
given it to) did with it."
Rick Gates: Ex-Manafort aide says the Mueller team "cherry-picked" his testimony about Kilimnik to spread a misleading, collusion-favorable
narrative. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
"I have no idea who made up the lies about 'detailed' or 'sensitive' polling data, or why they did it," Kilimnik says. "They were
mostly quotes of the polls from the media, such as LA Times and others. They would be 'Clinton "" 43, Trump "" 42.' Never anything
more detailed. I never got even a page printed out with either polling data or any other info."
This public data was shared, Kilimnik says, with Ukrainian clients of Manafort's as part of both regular political chatter and
an effort to encourage future business. "I shared this info with a lot of our clients in Ukraine, who were closely following the
race and who were excited about Paul working for [Trump]," Kilimnik says.
If any government official did receive his polling data, Kilimnik adds, they were not Russian but rather from Ukraine or even
the United States. "I would share it with our political contacts in Ukraine, basically to keep their interest to Paul and our Ukrainian
business alive. Also I shared it with the U.S. and other embassies, basically offering the opinion that the election is not over."
Kilimnik's account is corroborated by Gates, the ex-Manafort associate and Trump campaign official whose testimony was used by
the Mueller team "" deceptively, he says "" to suggest a connection between the polling data and possible Trump-Russia collusion.
The Special Counsel's office "relied heavily on Mr. Gates for evidence" about the polling data, the
New York Times noted in
February 2019.
According to Gates, that reliance entailed significant creative license by Mueller's prosecutors, particularly Weissmann. Gates
says he told the Special Counsel's Office that the polling data was not sensitive information, but rather publicly available figures
taken from media outlets.
"I explained to them, over the course of many interviews, what the polling data was about, and why it was being shared," Gates
told RCI. "All that was exchanged was old, topline data from public polls and from some internal polls, but all dated, nothing in
real time. So for example, Trump 48, Clinton 46. It was not massive binders full of demographics or deep research. No documents were
ever shared or disclosed. And this is part of what Mueller left out of the report. They cherry-picked and built a narrative that
really was not true, because they had pre-determined the conclusion."
Happier times: Manafort and colleagues, with Kilimnik far left and the boss seated in white shirt, red tie. AP Photo
Asked why Manafort shared any polling data with clients in Ukraine, Kilimnik and Gates stressed the same reason: money. "The were
some outstanding debts, which we were working to get repaid, which never happened," Kilimnik says. "And there was also Paul's reputation.
He was very well known to a lot of people in Kiev, and he hoped [he] could generate some new business" by showcasing his work for
Trump's campaign.
"This was a way that Paul was using to let people in Ukraine know that he was doing very well in the United States running the
election of Donald Trump, and that he was trying to collect the remaining fees that he was owed," for prior work in Ukraine, Gates
says. "He was trying to position himself. This is not unlike any other political operative, Republican or Democrat, in politics.
They all do it."
The Mueller report itself quietly bolsters Gates' and Kilimnik's converging recollections. "Gates' account about polling data
is consistent [redacted]," it states, ""¦ with multiple emails that Kilimnik sent to U.S. associates and press contacts" in the summer
of 2016. "Those emails referenced 'internal polling,' described the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort's role in it, and assessed
Trump' s prospects for victory." The corresponding footnote cites eight emails from Kilimnik to these "U.S. associates and press
contacts." This indicates that the Mueller team obtained direct evidence of the polling data that was shared; how it was discussed;
and with whom it was shared.
Rather than highlight the Kilimnik emails that it obtained, and Gates' account that the polling data was shared for financial
reasons, the Mueller report mentioned this information only in passing and ultimately concluded that it "could not reliably determine
Manafort's purpose in sharing" the information.
Weissmann did not respond to a request for comment.
The Kilimnik Passport Kilimnik's passport from the time in question "" to judge from photos and a video he shared with RCI
"" was issued in the standard red ... Konstantin Kilimnik via RealClearInvestigations ... not in the green of the diplomatic corps.
Mueller cited a Kilimnik "diplomatic passport" as evidence of "ties to Russian intelligence." Government of Russia/Wikimedia
Although the Mueller report walked back Weissman's innuendo regarding polling data, its assertion that Kilimnik has "ties to Russian
intelligence" remains a foundation of the Russia collusion narrative.
Putting aside the fact that the government has never produced any evidence that Kilimnik communicated with Russian intelligence
or the Kremlin, RCI has obtained documents that undercut the government's basis for assuming those unspecified "ties."
In Mueller's own telling, Kilimnik's only direct link to the Russian government was his enrollment in a Soviet military academy
from 1987 to 1992, where he trained as a linguist. "It's a language school, similar to what you guys have in Fort Monterey," Kilimnik
said, referring to the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, in Monterey, California. "It's a university that trains
military translators, mostly for the army, not for the intelligence services. Basically it was a military training, for five years,
focusing on English and Swedish. In normal circumstances, I would actually go and serve in the army, but because Soviet Union was
falling apart, I was able to get a job as the instructor of Swedish at the university. I never served in the real army. If teaching
Swedish counts as spying "" that will be very surprising."
To substantiate Kilimnik's alleged Russian intelligence "ties," the Mueller team wrote that Kilimnik "obtained a visa to travel
to the United States with a Russian diplomatic passport in 1997." (Intelligence operatives often travel to foreign countries under
diplomatic cover.)
Kilimnik's U.S. visa shows an "R" for "regular." (The typo in his last name was corrected on a later visa.) Konstantin Kilimnik via
RealClearInvestigations
But Kilimnik's passport from that period "" to judge from the images he shared with RCI via a messaging app "" was issued in the
standard red color, not in the green color of the diplomatic corps. The document also contains a regular U.S. visa issued on October
28, 1997 "" the same date the Mueller report claims he traveled to the U.S. "with a Russian diplomatic passport." The U.S. visa to
Kilimnik is issued under the category of "R" "" which stands for Regular "" and "B1/B2," the designation for a temporary visa for
business and tourism.
The Mueller team's claim that he possessed and travelled on a diplomatic passport is "a blatant lie," Kilimnik told RCI. "I never
had a diplomatic passport in my life. It's one of many very sloppy things in the Muller report, which don't make sense."
The Mueller report cites Kilimnik's "travel to the United States with a Russian diplomatic passport."
Mueller report, Page 133
Told of the Mueller report's apparent error concerning Kilimnik's passport, a Justice Department spokesperson declined comment.
Former Special Counsel Mueller and former lead prosecutor Weissmann did not respond to emailed queries.
Ironically, at the time when Mueller team claims that he visited the U.S. on behalf of the Russian government, Kilimnik was in
fact working for the U.S. government at the U.S. Congress-funded International Republican Institute (IRI) in Moscow. As RealClearInvestigations
has
previously reported , Kilimnik's 10-year IRI tenure is among several substantial Western government connections that have
been ignored in amid efforts to accuse him of ties to the Russian government. "I gave IRI my CV which clearly said which school I
graduated from, and gave my detailed background," Kilimnik recalls. "I never concealed anything."
Kilimnik: No Madrid Meeting With Manafort
When it comes to his travel history, Kilimnik says that the Special Counsel's Office made another significant error: falsely claiming
that he and Manafort held a meeting in Spain .
"I have never been to Madrid in my life," Kilimnik says. Wikimedia
When Manafort denied that he and Kilimnik met in Madrid in 2017, the Mueller team accused him of lying and cited this as one of
several alleged breaches of their cooperation agreement. The Mueller report claims that the two met in the Spanish capital on Feb.
26, 2017, "where Kilimnik had flown from Moscow."
It also states that Manafort initially denied the Madrid meeting in his first two interviews with the Special Counsel's office,
but then relented "after being confronted with documentary evidence that Kilimnik was in Madrid at the same time as him."
But Kilimnik tells RCI that no such meeting occurred, and that he believes that Manafort was coerced into changing his story.
"I have never been to Madrid in my life," Kilimnik says. The "documentary evidence" referenced in the Mueller report was, he speculates,
a flight booking that was ultimately cancelled. "I was thinking about going to Madrid, and I discussed it with Paul," he says. "But
it made no sense. And ultimately, it was too expensive. So I didn't go."
Had he actually visited Madrid, Kilimnik says, the Mueller team would have "easily found proof "" tickets, boarding passes, border
crossings "" all that stuff. It's not rocket science to get it. The European Union is a pretty disciplined place. There would be
at least be a record of me crossing the border somewhere in the EU."
Kilimnik told RCI that the last time he saw Manafort was one month before the alleged Madrid trip, around the time of Trump's
inauguration in Janaury 2017. "I did not attend any of the inauguration events myself," he recalls. "But I spent some time to meet
with Paul, and to catch up. That was our last meeting in-person, in Alexandria [Virginia]."
Asked why Manafort would have admitted to a Madrid meeting that did not in fact take place, Kilimnik said that his former boss
faced heavy pressure while locked up by the Mueller team, which included a long stint in solitary confinement. "I don't know why
he said that. I have difficulties to imagine Paul's psychological state when he was jailed. A guy who [had] a very high-level life.
Jail is a tough place. I still get the shudders to think what he had to go through."
The allegation that Manafort lied to the Mueller team proved consequential. In February 2019, U.S. District Judge Jackson
sided
with the Special Counsel and voided
Manafort's plea deal. No longer bound to give him a reduced sentence for cooperating, Jackson
nearly doubled Manafort's
prison term on top of his earlier conviction and excoriated him for telling "lies." President Trump pardoned in Manafort in December
2020.
Told that Kilimnik denies ever visiting Madrid, and asked whether the Special Counsel's office collected concrete evidence to
the contrary, both former Special Counsel Mueller and lead prosecutor Weissmann did not respond. A Justice Department spokesperson
declined comment.
FBI Alert Contradicts Senate-Treasury Spy Claim
Over one year after Mueller closed up shop, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) unilaterally upgraded Kilimnik's
alleged Russian intelligence status. The panel's
August 2020 report
declared that Kilimnik, far from merely having "ties" to the GRU as Mueller had claimed, is in fact a full-fledged "Russian intelligence
officer."
The Senate made the leap despite offering no new public evidence to support its explosive "assessment", and even acknowledging
that its "power to investigate" "" as well as "its staffing, resources, and technical capabilities" -- ultimately "falls short of
the FBI's."
Richard Burr and Mark Warner, Republican chair and Democratic co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The FBI and Justice
Department do not endorse their panel's judgment that Kilimnik is a "Russian intelligence officer." AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The Senate also labelled Kilimnik a Russian spy despite simultaneously presenting new evidence that he was, in the Committee's
own words, a "valuable resource" for officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, with whom he was "in regular contact."
In September 2020,
RCI asked the FBI and Justice Department whether it shares the SSCI's judgment that Kilimnik is a "Russian intelligence officer."
A DOJ spokesperson replied that "the Mueller report speaks for itself," and advised that the public "defer" to how Kilimnik was characterized
in the Mueller report and the Special Counsel Office's indictments. This strongly suggested, RCI reported, that the FBI has not adopted
the SSCI's view that Kilimnik is a Russian spy.
The FBI's February "alert"
offering $250,000 for information leading to Kilimnik's arrest bolsters this reporting. It once again states that Kilimnik is "assessed
by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence" "" shunning the SSCI's spy language and reverting to Mueller's original, ambiguous
characterization.
The wording of the FBI alert underscores that while the Senate Intelligence Committee and Treasury Department have declared that
Kilimnik is a Russian spy, the nation's top law enforcement agency has never adopted that assessment. When Manafort's legal team
asked the Special Counsel's Office for any communication between Manafort and "Russian intelligence officials,"
they
were told that "there are no materials responsive to [those] requests." In unsealed notes from early 2017, Peter Strzok "" the
top FBI counterintelligence agent who opened the Trump-Russia investigation ""
wrote :
"We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials."
Asked whether the FBI has altered its characterization of Kilimnik in light of Treasury's claim that he is a "known Russian Intelligence
Services agent", an FBI spokesperson declined comment.
The FBI's alert was also remarkable for the size of the Kilimnik bounty, which is more than double the amount of most members
of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. While the bureau is offering $100,000 each for information regarding six alleged murderers,
and $200,000 for another, the FBI is offering $250,000 for help nabbing Kilimnik on a lone witness tampering charge in Manafort's
Ukraine lobbying case.
The Mueller team
accused Kilimnik of sending text messages to two individuals with whom Manafort had worked during his Ukraine lobbying days.
Kilimnik's aim, the Special Counsel's Office alleged, was to pressure the pair to attest that their prior work was focused on lobbying
officials in Europe, not in the United States. These individuals "" identified in court documents as "Person D1" and "Person D2"
"" were not active witnesses for the Mueller probe, but instead, according to the Special Counsel's Office, "potential witnesses."
The 13 Kilimnik messages to these "potential witnesses"
cited by Mueller include the following:
[Person D2], hi! How are you? Hope you are doing fine. ;))
My friend P [Manafort] is trying to reach [Person D1] to brief him on what's going on.
If you have a chance to mention this to [Person D1] - would be great.
Basically P wants to give him a quick summary that he says to everybody (which is true) that our friends never lobbied in the
U.S., and the purpose of the program was EU.
Hi. This is [Kilimnik]. My friend P is looking for ways to connect to you to pass you several messages. Can we arrange that.
Kilimnik says that he was not trying to tamper with anyone. "I do not understand how two messages to our old partners who helped
us get out the message about Ukraine's integration aspirations in EU, and asking them to get in touch with Paul, can be interpreted
as 'intimidation' or 'obstruction of justice,'" he says.
Whether or not Kilimnik sought to tamper with "potential witnesses" in Manafort's Ukraine lobbying case, the alleged 2018 infraction
has nothing to do with 2016 Trump-Russia collusion.
The FBI alert from February raises questions about the bombshell Treasury Department claims released two months later. If the
U.S. government stands by Treasury's claims about Kilimnik, why is he wanted only on a minor, non-Russia related witness-tampering
charge, and not for taking part in alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election? If Kilimnik indeed passed on "sensitive information
on polling and campaign strategy" to Russian intelligence while working as a spy, why has he not been indicted alongside the Russian
social media company charged by Mueller in February 2018, or the Russian intelligence officers charged by Mueller in July 2018?
To Kilimnik, the answer is found on that same Russian passport that Mueller mischaracterized. "It is clear to me that the indictment
of 2018 was pulled out of the thin air, simply to have a Russian face in the mix," he says. "I understand that they needed a Russian
to investigate 'Russia collusion,' and I happened to be that Russian," he says.
"The funny thing is that I'm not hiding. And I would have explained the same thing to the FBI or anyone who never reached out
to me. They don't because they don't want the truth."
From Russian Spy to "Influence Agent"
In Kilimnik's eyes, his utility as a Russian national for the Trump-Russia collusion narrative also explains his prominent inclusion
in the recent U.S. Intelligence
Community Assessment , released in March one month after the FBI alert for his arrest.
In yet another new iteration of how Kilimnik is described by the U.S. government, the ICA does not call him a Russian intelligence
officer, but instead a "Russian influence agent."
The ICA does not define the term "Russian influence agent," or explain how it reached that new assessment about Kilimnik. Nor
does it put forth any evidence for the alleged Russian influence activities ascribed to him .
The report alleges that Kilimnik was part of a "network of Ukraine-linked individuals "¦ connected to the Russian Federal Security
Service (FSB)" who "took steps throughout the [2020] election cycle to damage U.S. ties to Ukraine, denigrate President Biden and
his candidacy, and benefit former President Trump's prospects for reelection."
Andriy Derkach: "I have never met him in my life," Kilimnik says of this Ukrainian lawmaker with reputed Kremlin ties. Petro Zhuravel/Wikimedia
As part of this alleged meddling network, the ICA asserts that Kilimnik tried to influence U.S. officials; helped produce a documentary
that aired on U.S. television in January 2020; and worked with Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker alleged to have Kremlin ties.
"Derkach, Kilimnik, and their associates sought to use prominent U.S. persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to U.S.
officials and audiences," the ICA states.
Kilimnik says the U.S. intelligence officials who wrote those words are using their anonymity and power to launder their false
narratives about him.
"I have no idea what they're talking about," he says. "I would really love to see at least one confirmation of the things they
allege. Pulling me into this report with zero evidence really shows that [U.S. intelligence] people high up do not give a damn about
the truth, facts, or anything."
As for Derkach, "I have never met him in my life," Kilimnik says. "I don't know why, or on what basis, they're making claims that
he has any relationship to me."
"I had zero meetings with anybody related to the Trump campaign. In fact, I have tried to do my best "" understanding how I've
gotten into this mess "" to stay as far as possible from any U.S. politics." If he had held such meetings, Kilimnik adds, "this should
be easy to prove."
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to requests for comment.
No Effort to Contact Russiagate's Top Russian
Even though Kilimnik's name fills dozens of pages of the Mueller and Senate Intelligence reports after years of federal scrutiny
and he is the target of a $250,000 FBI reward, this seemingly critical Russiagate figure has never been contacted by a single U.S.
government official, to judge from the public record as well as Kilimnik's account.
The lack of contact is similar to the way FBI, Mueller, and Senate investigators treated other supposedly central Russiagate figures.
When Joseph Mifsud, whose conversations with George Papadopoulos triggered the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, visited the U.S. in early
2017, the FBI subjected him to
a light round of questioning and then let him leave the country. The Mueller team later claimed in its final report that Mifsud
had lied to FBI agents, yet inexplicably did not indict him. Despite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's central role in publishing
the stolen Democratic Party emails supposedly hacked and supplied by Russia, the
Mueller team never contacted him and the Senate Intelligence Committee
shunned an offer to interview him .
Kilimnik believes that this avoidance is deliberate. "The FBI and others could have had the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv or Moscow, or
have any of my numerous contacts in the U.S., reach out and start a conversation, if they wanted info," he says. "But they do not
really need it. All they is need is a scarecrow. And as one of the few people within reach of the Trump campaign who has a Russian
passport, they picked me."
"They never reached out to me," he adds. "I never had a single contact with FBI or any government official, basically since charges
were brought [on] Paul. Nobody ever tried to talk to me because they know the truth. They understood damn well that I will tell them
what I'm telling you."
Kilimnik says that he has had only minimal contact with Manafort since the former Trump campaign chairman was released to home
confinement in March 2020 and subsequently pardoned by Trump in late December. "We had one short contact after he got out of jail,
basically catching up about family and kids and everything," Kilimnik recalls. "I want to give him time to just basically get his
life back to normal. We have not spoken on the telephone."
After years in Ukraine working with Manafort, Kilimnik now lives full-time in Moscow with his wife and two children. "I have been
pretty open all my life, and have not been hiding from anyone," Kilimnik says. "I would have been happy to answer any questions from
the FBI, or whoever. But I refuse to be a toy in bizarre political games and have my life ruined more than it has been because of
the senseless and false accusations."
Despite being labeled a Russian spy who meddled in the 2016 election, Kilimnik has no plans to return to the U.S. and try to clear
his name. "I am not going to the U.S. on my own dime, with no visa in COVID times only to be crucified by the media, having zero
chance of justice," he says. "This is a sad continuation of a deeply wrong story. I thought it would be over with Trump gone and
the need to create lies about his 'ties to Russia.' But obviously, I was wrong."
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roc993 19 May, 2021 Did the Democrats and the media ever apologize for spending 2 years claiming the election was stolen by
Trump? The drumbeat was continuous - ratcheting up day by day - "Walls closing in" - right up to the point Mueller threw cold
water on the entire thing. Then they slinked away without another word. And no censorship of those entities and individuals by
FaceBook and Twitter? Fascinating. Reply 40 11 2 reply
N notenough 19 May, 2021 What are the odds that the FBI/Treasury Dept, CIA, etc are lying to the public about this whole mess
THEY created....100%. These are all political organizations, tasked with protecting the status quo, the status quo being the protection
of Empire. Reply 30 7 1 reply
A AJMG 19 May, 2021 "In his speech before a joint session of Congress last week, President Biden complained about "Russia's
interference in our elections," even though his intelligence czar had released a report the previous month formally dismissing
the idea Moscow had interfered in the 2020 election or the 2016 election." Reply 23 7 1 reply
D daniel155 19 May, 2021 No one, even those on the other side, believes there was Russian collusion though they will never
admit it. Hillary still says the Russia stole the election from her. I guess she uses that to cope with the fact that she blew
a very winnable election. Reply 28 7
A AJMG 19 May, 2021 Trump opposed Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline, & today we learn that Biden has accepted it. If Putin favored
Trump, it was a bad miscalculation since Trump was way more tough on Russia than any Democrat. Reply 36 6 1 reply
DH Derrick Hand 19 May, 2021 Hate to tell you guys but the Russia collusion discussion is over, no matter who is right. The
Media has succeeded in mudding the water and destroying any trust in finding the truth with respect to anything political, including
any election and that includes the coming one in 2022. This is like an argument at a table for four in a raucous high school cafeteria.
You should be more concerned where this total loss of trust is going to lead us and that is not a good place. Reply 16 6 3 reply
W Wisewerds 19 May, 2021 A wholly partisan, politically biased prosecutor lied and cherry-picked information to support a
pre-determined conclusion in an effort to savage an opponent and jail his supporters? I would put on my shocked face, but its
currently at the cleaners. Instead, I will just suggest that this is now standard operating procedure for our left-fascist oppressors.
Reply 21 4 1 reply
C Crutch 19 May, 2021 I can't wait for 2022 House win by Republicans. The first thing they should do is haul Adam Schiff in
under oath to discuss his every utterance, then expel him from the House. Reply 40 9 5 reply
A archon27 19 May, 2021 It not sedition if the democrats try to oust a legally elected president on a falsified premise...
because THEIR "evidence" was believable... This is literally the mantra of the left. Reply 27 6 3 reply
Mark H 19 May, 2021 If the wider media do not pick this up then the matter of Trump campaign's collusion with Russia can never
be cleared up, and will continue to serve the intention of the establishment. VAPOR 19 May, 2021 The media portrayed both Obama
and Biden as uninvolved. But now we know they both actively followed the investigation. According to former acting attorney general
Sally Yates, she was surprised that Obama knew about the investigation and knew more than she did at the time. Obama called upon
former FBI director James Comey to stay after a meeting to discuss the investigation. Comey had mentioned using the Logan Act
to charge Flynn, even though the unconstitutional law has never been used successfully in a prosecution since the country was
founded. Biden has repeatedly denied knowledge of the investigation. Just a day before the latest disclosure, George Stephanopoulos
asked Biden in an interview what he knew of the Flynn investigation. Biden was adamant that he knew nothing about "those moves"
and he called it a diversion. But that is not true if he took the relatively uncommon action for a vice president of demanding
the unmasking of Flynn information.
Justis 20 May, 2021 Thank you for your continued work. This is all hidden from Americans in this age of media coverage. But more
importantly it is devastating information about the dishonesty of our government. What have we come to? What recourse is available?
VAPOR 19 May, 2021 Carter Page Sues FBI, Comey, McCabe for Millions Nov 28, 2020" Former Trump campaign aide Carter Page filed
a $75 million lawsuit against the FBI and several former high-ranking bureau officials ... Reply 6 1 1 reply
V VAPOR 19 May, 2021 Just a reminder that Obama and his minions committed the greatest political crime in US history when
they weaponized government agencies to influence and discredit a presidential election and frame Trump. Reply 7 3 1 reply
V VAPOR 19 May, 2021 Obama needs to answer questions about his involvement with the Fake Russian Dossier and the weaponization
of government agencies to get Trump. He basically planted evidence and then said prosecute Trump by the book.
futbolfan 19 May, 2021 I respect all the dogged investigators who root out the truth of the crimes and corruption of our "justice
department", and FBI. I hope they keep up the good work. Personally I have no more faith in anything which was soaked in the hate
and insanity of the Obama thug regime...
Jerubbesheth xx 19 May, 2021 Give it up already. The Russia Trump Collusion was already disapproved by Mueller. Americans
are tired of the disinformation and propaganda. Bolshevik Schiff is a pathological liar. If anyone colluded with Russia it was
certainly Liberal Commie Democrat Clinton. The reason Bolshevik Schiff doesn't investigate Clinton? Schiff and Clinton are part
of the swamp. Clinton bought and paid for colluded with an ex-British Spy on a false dossier on Trump. Clinton was already in
Putin's pocket. Clinton approved the sale of Uranium one to the Russians, and then Clinton receives $145 Million from Russian
Oligarchs for her Corrupt Clinton Foundation. Mueller was FBI director at the time. So now who is colluding with the Russians.
I guess Clinton's colluding with the Russians is the good kind for the liberal commie Democrats, while the Liberal commie Democrats
deflect the bad colluding onto to Trump. Colluding is colluding anyway you cut it. Hillary's colluding wasn't disapproved. Reply
10 3 3 reply
C chuckstephens06 19 May, 2021 While the Special prosecutor office was capable of any transgression or corruption, one needs
to realize that it wouldn't have been possible without the assistance of corrupt lefty operative Judge, Amy Berman Jackson...
Jackson's non legal, political approach to decision making, has been the example that all corrupt lefty judges follow... Plus
her questionable relationship with Weissman outside of the Courtroom... Reply 6 2
K kochcomics 20 May, 2021 Lets see what we have here: 1)Kilimnik says he has no ties to the Russian government. OK. Do you
really believe that no one in the Putin's government has directly or indirectly debriefed him. Really? Do you think he would have
a choice in the matter? Do you know anything about Putin at all? Does he believe in democracy,. You clearly know little about
Trump. We've had Trump here for 40 years - from the NY Post page six to Howard Stern. Its a joke. Hey, he was proposing running
with Oprah as his VP in 2002. Then he tricked into the birther stuff. Lets check out the apologies from the Donald and the push
back from Republicans (apart from McCain) 2) There were enough sympathetic Russians around (Putin included) to raise concerns.
As the Donald himself made clear, he would have no problem with outside foreign help. The investigation took place. It was damning,
but not pretty clear that no . The collusion was possible but speculative, but as Jared himself said, the campaign was too chaotic
for any collusion to really get off the ground (though you are still stuck with Manafort as a conflicted party). But in Donald
world, everything is a bout big pronouncements... See more Reply 2 2
F futbolfan 19 May, 2021 For years, we on the right knew who had done what, and who should be arrested, Comey, Rosenstein,
Strzok, Mueller, etc. But I am not a lawyer, and I am not sure what crimes, exactly, these evil and sick creeps would be charged
with, if they ever were arrested. For me, the key question now is, if they WERE charged with whatever the appropriate offence
would be, what is the statute of limitations on those types of crimes? There is NO statue on treason, as far as I know. But what
about conspiracy? Obstruction of justice? Betrayal of oath of office? Sedition? The reason these questions are still alive is,
obviously there are people still patiently digging into the twisting trails of the conspirators, and eventually they may reel
in some live prospects for prosecution. Maybe even including "the big guy with black skin" Obama himself. Nothing would make me
happier than to see that African nightmare in handcuffs. Reply 4 4 2 reply
DC dana crow 20 May, 2021 Can't blame them for running with lies, innuendo and conspiracy theories when all Trump and Republicans
could ever muster in response was nuh-uh or let-mueller-finish-his-work. "Ties to [insert boogeyman]" is always a tell. It literally
means NOT the boogeyman. And since the "ties" are conveniently redacted, he probably ordered borscht from someone whose second
cousin gave a talk at a charity event hosted by a retired russian intel gofer. The election interference/russia collusion business
was always a cynical ploy to isolate Trump from his friends and bog down his administration. And it was wildly successful.
will.ganness 20 May, 2021 Who is calling the January 6th Protests the biggest threat the the country since the Civil war? The Democratic
Party, the MSM, The FBI.... Who produced and directed Russiagate? The same three!! If progressives think they should get on board
with Insurrectiongate, they should have more sense! VAPOR 19 May, 2021 The Fake Russian Dossier do it by the book Crossfire Hurricane
insurance policy to overturn a presidential election and frame Trump. Where is Professor Misfud and why won't Steele talk to Durham?
Call in Mary Jacoby and ask her what she discussed with Obama at the white house.
spinbag48 1 day ago Adam Schiff is a fool who told us he had the goods on Trump, but it turns out he is a liar. I do have
a question... The FBI spent 2 years and $35 million dollars investigating Trump only to find out they didn't have a case. But
when the pipeline got hacked Biden said the FBI told him that the Kremlin wasn't involved within a day of two. How is it they
got that good so quick? Same with the election within a couple of days they knew that the election was fair and square. Even though
I saw many people of TV say they saw corruption right in front of them. But the shooting of Andrew Brown took a month when they
had numerous videos that they couldn't release until the investigation was complete. I have lost all faith in the FBI, and the
press. They don't even pretend they are fair or truthful. Reply 1 1
CA Clear 4 All 19 May, 2021 The USIC and media has destroyed their own name. Nothing that the Russia collusion purveyors say
now has value on any topic. Russia didn't do that.
Justis 20 May, 2021 Why did Horowitz not discover this in his investigation? Was that investigation another coverup, finding just
enough to look authentic? Is he too, untrustworthy?
"... A draft report published online by the assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs caused consternation in Russian media on Monday, after statements came to light that argued the bloc "should establish with the US a transatlantic alliance to defend democracy globally" and "deter Russia" from supposed aggression in Eastern Europe. ..."
A draft report published
online by the assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs caused consternation in Russian media on Monday, after statements came
to light that argued the bloc "should establish with the US a transatlantic alliance to defend democracy globally" and "deter
Russia" from supposed aggression in Eastern Europe.
As part of its "vision" for future ties with Moscow, the paper concludes that the EU should put forward a number of incentives
designed to persuade Russians that a turn to the West would be beneficial, including visa liberalization and "free trade investment."
[...]
At the same time, the committee puts forward a number of extreme steps that it says the bloc should take. It insists that
Brussels "must be prepared not to recognize the parliament of Russia and to ask for Russia's suspension from international
organizations with parliamentary assemblies if the 2021 parliamentary elections in Russia are recognized as fraudulent."
The success or failure of this operation will depend entirely on the Russian people. Will it fall for the Western European
honey trap once again?
After Putin is gone, bets are off. Also, the EU continues to suffer from refugee waves from Syria and Libya, and its economy
continues to deteriorate (recession confirmed for Q1 2021). The whole system is so exhausted that they don't talk about even of
the absorption of Moldova anymore (the Moldovan president had to bring that up to the Kremlin; good they remembered them).
This looks like Biden had some surge of sanity, but it's not: I read an article on Izvestia some days ago and it seems Russia
won the war for the Arctic and has expelled the USA from that sea. That, combined with the fact that Russia has been ramping up
investment on the sector, results in the fact that, soon enough, Russia will also have the infrastructure to deliver cheaper LNG
by ship to Europe, too.
That means the USA has given up on the NordStream II in order to hurt the Russian LNG investments. Yes, people, that's the
insanity of the situation: the USG is completely lost. It still has its ace in the hole, though: the Green Party is set to win
the next German general elections, and they're rabid Atlanticists. Like, this would cost Germany dearly and they wouldn't last
two years in government, but at least Russian gas to Europe through a non-Ukrainian route would be stopped.
Speaking of the Ukraine, this whole situation makes us reflect: it is patent at this point in time that the EU is a subsidiary
of NATO - it expands eastwards after those countries become NATO members. They're the "socioeconomic" version of NATO. This has
created a huge problem for the EU, though, because the Ukraine is a massive financial black hole to the American economy (through
the IMF) and the USA is pressuring the EU to make it a member quick, so that this black hole goes to European (i.e. German) hands.
The thing is Germany obviously doesn't want that, because it needs the Euro to keep at where it is or stronger (you can only enter
the EU by entering the EZ nowadays). The Ukraine is salivating to become an EZ member - that's the whole point of the Maidan coup
in the first place - so Ukraine entering the EU without entering the EZ is out of the table. The EU must've told the USA that
no, the Ukraine must first become a NATO member, then they'll make it an EZ-EU member. The Ukraine is the proverbial hot potato.
All of that coupled with the hard economic fact that, without the Russian gas transit exclusivity, you can't leverage Ukraine's
debt, because, after Maidan, all of the public goods and infrastructure were privatized to American capitalists. That means we
have the absurd situation where Germany has to give up cheaper gas for itself (which would be essential for its economic recovery)
in order to make the Ukraine happy so that it enters the EU, so that it becomes a financial black hole... to the German economy!
Germany has to pay the Ukraine for the privilege of having to pay it even more, for eternity.
The price of nation-building has become more and more expensive to the capitalist world. Turns out those Third World shitholes
have learned something after all those decades.
Taiwan is also suffering from a significant brain drain to the Mainland. They're trying to solve the problem by demonizing
those people by calling them "traitors".
More Hacks, More Baseless Accusations Against Russia
In January police in various countries took down the Emotet bot-network that was at that
time the basic platform for some 25% of all cybercrimes.
Based on hearsay Wikipedia and other had falsely attributed Emotet to Russian actors.
The real people behind it were actually
Ukrainians :
The operating center of Emotet was found in the Ukraine. Today the Ukrainian national police
took control of it during a raid (video). The police found dozens of
computers, some hundred hard drives, about 50 kilogram of gold bars (current price
~$60,000/kg) and large amounts of money in multiple currencies.
Now the U.S. is accusing Russia of somehow having part in another cybercrime :
President Joe Biden said Monday that a Russia-based group was behind the ransomware attack
that forced the shutdown of the largest oil pipeline in the eastern United States.
The FBI identified the group behind the hack of Colonial Pipeline as DarkSide, a shadowy
operation that surfaced last year and attempts to lock up corporate computer systems and
force companies to pay to unfreeze them.
"So far there is no evidence ... from our intelligence people that Russia is involved,
although there is evidence that actors, ransomware is in Russia," Biden told reporters.
"They have some responsibility to deal with this," he said.
Three days after being forced to halt operations, Colonial said Monday it was moving
toward a partial reopening of its 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometers) of pipeline" the largest
fuel network between Texas and New York.
Biden however is badly informed. There is no evidence that DarkSide has anything to do with
Russia. It is, like Emotet, a commercial
'ransomware-as-a-service' criminal entity that wants to make money and does not care about
geopolitics.
Yes, a version of the DarkNet software does exclude itself from running on system with
specific
language settings :
The DarkSide malware is even built to conduct language checks on targets and to shut down if
it detects Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Georgian, Kazakh, Turkmen, Romanian, and
other languages ...
That is a quite long list of east European languages and Russian is only one of it. Why the
authors of DarkNet do not want their software to run on machines with those language settings
is unknown. But why would a Russian actor protect machines with Ukrainian or Romanian language
settings? Both countries are hostile towards Russia. To claim that this somehow points to
Russian actors is therefore baseless.
The Kremlin has once again pointed out the importance of cooperation between Moscow and
Washington in tackling cyberthreats amid a cyber-attack on Colonial Pipeline, a US company.
"Russia has nothing to do with these hacker attacks, nor with the previous hacker attacks,"
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Preskov assured reporters on Tuesday.
"We categorically reject any accusation against us, and we can only regret that the US is
refusing to cooperate with us in any way to counter cyber-threats. We believe that such
cooperation - both international and bilateral - could indeed contribute to the common
struggle against this scourge [known as] cyber-crime," Peskov said.
The U.S. seems notoriously bad at attributing computer hacks. It claims that the recent
SolarWinds attack which intruded several government branches was also done by Russia. But that
attack
required deep insider knowledge and access to SolarWinds' computers
and processes :
The recently discovered deep intrusion into U.S. companies and government networks used a
manipulated version of the SolarWinds Orion network management software. The Washington borg
immediately attributed the hack to Russia. Then President Trump attributed it to China. But
none of those claims were backed up by facts or known evidence.
The hack was extremely complex, well managed and resourced, and likely required insider
knowledge. To this IT professional it 'felt' neither Russian nor Chinese. It is far more
likely, as Whitney Webb finds, that
Israel was behind it .
Indeed - the programmers of an Israeli company, recently bought up by SolarWinds, had all
the necessary access for such a hack. However the U.S. sanctioned Russia over the SolarWinds
hack without providing any evidence of its involvement.
If the U.S. continues to blame Russia without any evidence for each and every hack there may
come a time when Russia stops caring and really starts to hack into or destroy important U.S.
systems. The U.S. should fear that day.
Posted by b on May 11, 2021 at 17:31 UTC |
Permalink
Thanks b. I don't think Russia is going to escalate destructive attacks any time soon.
There's no upside.
They might even be reluctant to reveal their capabilities in the Ukraine.
For the moment, mockery is the best remedy while they up their game.
@ b who ended with
"
If the U.S. continues to blame Russia without any evidence for each and every hack there may
come a time when Russia stops caring and really starts to hack into or destroy important U.S.
systems.
"
How can you write such assertions that vary from the approach that both Russia and China
are taking?....strong defense but no offense.
Now if empire tried to hack into a Russian or Chinese system/network then appropriate
takedowns of malicious systems/networks would seem logical....and I expect they know
how...but will not do it on the basis of another avenue of empire lies and deceit.
You should have titled the post "Killing Two Birds With One Stone".
This pipeline is huge, running from Texas through the Southeast and all the way up to New
England. It's condition is beyond awful with multiple leaks along the route some of which
lose more than a million gallons per month and much more than can be determined since some of
the gasoline / jet fuel went into the aquifers. These faults have been well known for decades
and although some of the areas are heavily populated no remediation was done. The local
outcry recently caught the attention of the press when kids reported a gasoline smell along
the pipeline route to the police. The locals demanded the pipeline be closed for repairs and
sought answers from state officials and Federal authorities as to why this situation was
allowed. To blame the Russians for the closure of the pipeline which results in a surge in
prices and limited availability of gas for the summer is an absolute stroke of genius.
https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/ncdeq-colonial-pipeline-spill-huntersville/275-70e16fb6-c945-4634-b933-3975d0573f2e
It is odd that certain elements of the us intelligence community, along with negative
factions within the us political establishment, continue to absolutely refuse to enter into
verifiable and mutually binding international agreements on cyber security with exactly the
nation states that they accuse (without evidence) of malicious activity in the same sphere,
while at the same time operating in this field in an openly declared hostile manner under the
secrecy deemed necessary for 'national security'.
(nytimes.com)
371 Posted by msmash on Monday May 24, 2021 @04:00PM from the how-about-that dept. Florida
on Monday became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
moderate
speech online , by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political
candidates in the state. From a report:
The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook's and Twitter's
bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring
candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms
in response to the contents of their stories. Mr. DeSantis said signing the bill meant that
Floridians would be "guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites."
"If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the
dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable," he said in a statement.
The bill is part of a broader push among conservative state legislatures to crack down on the
ability of tech companies to manage posts on their platforms. The political efforts took off
after Mr. Trump was barred after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers around the
country have echoed Mr. Trump's accusations that the companies are biased against
conservative personalities and publications, even though those accounts often thrive online.
More than a hundred bills targeting the companies' moderation practices have been filed
nationwide this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of the
bills have died, but a proposal is still being debated in Texas.
Robert would have become president, and then reopen the investigation into his brother's
murder.
A generation later, JFK's son, John F. Kennedy, Jr, who was also undoubtedly heading
toward the presidency or at least high politics, died when his small plane suddenly
nose-dived into the ocean. The chain of potential justice has been successively cut off.
The Mossad fingerprints are all over Robert's death and also Oswald's. And the Israeli
connection is conspicuously absent from the decades of conspiracy investigations that seem to
have been deliberately led to the CIA - Michael Collins Piper being the notable exception who
linked to Israel.
Dimona was the principal reason, says Guyénot, and shows that Lyndon Johnson put
paid to all opposition to Dimona coming from the US.
~~
I am not a student of this affair, but I've never seen much made of the fact that JFK was
already embarked upon issuing US currency directly - the USA Note rather than the Federal
Reserve Note that we call dollars today. This was canceled under Johnson, of course.
Presidents don't get to issue greenbacks. We had already seen how that worked out for
Lincoln.
Not a student of this, as I say. But I tend to see the world's power pyramid with
debt-issuers at the top, and all the other factions on lower steps. So, Dimona, yes, the main
incentive for Israel, and all the lesser motivations that caused rejoicing in many other
groups - but the money control at the top, in my view, is the force that gives the nod to
these various factions and approves the hit.
No one has asked but the most fascinating suspect in Dealey Plaza that fateful day was
Lamar Hunt.
Yes, that Lamar Hunt. The Lamar Hunt Trophy is in honor of that very guy.
He was the son of H.L. Hunt the billionaire oilman who had his main offices in Dealey
Plaza. Lamar Hunt was in his thirties at the time (31) and flew to Mexico minutes after the
shooting (this is a matter of record).
Lamar was escorting two men around Dealey Plaza that day. One was arrested coming out of a
building, arrested because he was reported/fingered as suspicious, someone that didn't belong
there.
The guy said he was looking for a phone booth to call his mother. This was James Braden a
known mafia hit man (who, by the way, was in the vicinity of the hotel where RFK was
assassinated). Braden was detained and then released. The other person, that had arrived with
Braden, checked out of his hotel minutes after the assassination and was gone.
Skiming through the JFK chapter of Guyenot's book, 'From Yahweh to Zion' it is obviously a
number of compelling 'reasons' JFK and his brother were despised by the Zionists.
First was their father Joe Kennedy. Out with the Swiss Army Knife of words, again.
Dimona also figured large. This was also covered by Seymour Hirsh in, 'The Sampson
Option., Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.' Note, Hersh writes in the
introduction, he refused to travel to the Bandit State because of the wall to wall censorship
imposed on ALL journalists.
Importantly, JFK visited a Palestinian refugee camp in 1956 and 'expressed sympathy' for
the Palestinians. The Zionists worst fears were his proposals to have them registered a
Foreign Agents.
KFK also advocated UN resolution 194, The Right of Return.
Posted by: Paul | May 24 2021 6:01 utc | 118 - and others on the JFK thing
I think it was the detente he intended to enter into with the USSR in addition to a few
other things.
For one, he wasn't murdered in Dallas, TX for no reason. That was the city where big oil
co-joined with the newly powerful "intelligence" community of the Dulles and Bush families.
The depletion allowance was a big deal and JFK was one of, if not the, first to suggest he
might end it.
Then there was the Cuba situation.
Finally there was the infamous quote about rendering the CIA into a thousand shards and it
blowing into the wind or something of that nature.
He managed to piss off and threaten all the main powers that be, including those with very
high level mafia connections.
If anyone gets the chance to visit it, the museum in Dallas in the former book repository
on the fifth (?) floor of that building is quite worth a visit. I thought I'd be bored as
hell when my wife and her younger sister dragged me and the family there one Saturday
afternoon, but it ended up being fascinating. That said, if I were a left-leaning or
anti-corporate/oil president to this day I'd stay TF away from Dallas or Houston, TX save for
an airfield-only visit. Well, until Iran can create the capability to murder our
politicians/diplomats from the air with no repercussions (still, anyone heard from Ayatollah
Mike in the last 6 months? Asking for a friend).
Starter's reading list (a must list IMO for every American) for you in order to understand
the Kennedy assassination (no, Israel had nothing to do with it):
James W. Douglass - JFK and the Unspeakable
David Talbot - Devil's Chessboard
James DiEugenio - Destiny Betrayed/ The JFK Assassination
Mark Lane - Rush to Judgement
Peter Dale Scott - Deep Politics and the Death of JFK
For more literature go to Our
Hidden History which is a treasure trove of all things US Deep State politics from Heroin
Trade in the Golden Triangle to Vietnam to JFK, to Watergate, Iran-Contra etc...
Auditors for a 2020 election investigation being carried out in Windham, New Hampshire, are
saying that some of their latest findings are "large enough to account for discrepancies" in
the election results.
Auditors said they found "experimental confirmation that if the contest is undervoted, a
fold through a vote target can create a vote."
"Something we strongly suspect at this juncture, based on various evidence, is that in
some cases, fold lines are being interpreted by the scanners as valid votes," Mark Lindeman,
part of the audit team,
told WMUR .
Harri Hursti, another auditor, said on Twitter that testing proved folded ballots were
misinterpreted by machines.
"Test decks proved that foldings across a vote targets is misinterpreted as additional
phantom votes or subtracts votes due to false overvotes," he wrote in a post.
Auditors finished the hand recount on May 21. The audit began
on May 11.
AccuVote didn't respond to a request for comment about the audit authorization by the Epoch
Times. The AccuVote machines' intellectual property are owned by Dominion Voting Systems.
Windham's four state representative seats were all won by Republicans on Election Night. The
presidential election was not an item for this audit.
Democrat candidate Kristi St. Laurent, who lost by a narrow margin of 24 votes, requested an
audit ( pdf ) claiming
that the machines were improperly programmed, and that double voting was involved.
As a result, New Hampshire's Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, signed a bill last month that gave authorization
for forensic analysis and a comprehensive recount of the 2020 election votes in Windham related
to optical scanning AccuVote machines.
An automatic recount was done, resulting in St. Laurent losing 99 more votes after a hand
recount. Meanwhile, four Republicans gained about 300 votes each.
The other three Democrats gained between 18 and 28 votes.
The audit team said that more issues could be involved besides folded ballots being
misinterpreted.
"The fold effect is large enough to account for discrepancies, but might not be all that's
going on," the team said on Twitter on May 22.
"75 folded ballots voted straight Republican. Only 48 votes recorded for them. Folds
generated overvotes. This is machine used on Election Day [for] most absentee ballots."
Another machine was found to have "an even more dramatic problem" by the auditors, who said
that only 28 percent of the votes for Republican candidates were counted.
"The work is not completed yet. While the folding seems to be a strong contributor it
clearly is not the only factor," Hursti said on Sunday.
"For example: We have observed vastly different error rates on two machines processing the
same ballots. Work continues."
One of the things that makes Wi-Fi work is its ability to break big chunks of
data into smaller chunks and combine smaller chunks into bigger chunks, depending on the needs of the network at any given
moment. These mundane network plumbing features, it turns out, have been harboring vulnerabilities that can be exploited to send
users to malicious websites or exploit or tamper with network-connected devices, newly published research shows.
In all, researcher Mathy Vanhoef found a dozen vulnerabilities, either in the
Wi-Fi specification or in the way the specification has been implemented in huge numbers of devices. Vanhoef has dubbed the
vulnerabilities
FragAttacks
,
short for fragmentation and aggregation attacks, because they all involve frame fragmentation or frame aggregation. Broadly
speaking, they allow people within radio range to inject frames of their choice into networks protected by WPA-based encryption.
Bad news
FURTHER READING
Serious flaw in WPA2 protocol lets attackers intercept passwords and much more
Assessing the impact of the vulnerabilities isn't straightforward. FragAttacks allow data to be injected into Wi-Fi traffic, but
they don't make it possible to exfiltrate anything out. That means FragAttacks can't be used to read passwords or other sensitive
information the way a previous Wi-Fi attack of Vanhoef, called
Krack
,
did. But it turns out that the vulnerabilities -- some that have been part of Wi-Fi since its release in 1997 -- can be exploited to
inflict other kinds of damage, particularly if paired with other types of hacks.
"It's never good to have someone able to drop packets into your network or target your devices on the network," Mike Kershaw, a
Wi-Fi security expert and developer of the open source Kismet wireless sniffer and IDS, wrote in an email. "In some regards,
these are no worse than using an unencrypted access point at a coffee shop -- someone can do the same to you there, trivially -- but
because they can happen on networks you'd otherwise think are secure and might have configured as a trusted network, it's
certainly bad news."
He added: "Overall, I think they give someone who was already targeting an
attack against an individual or company a foothold they wouldn't have had before, which is definitely impactful, but probably
don't pose as huge a risk as drive-by attacks to the average person."
While the flaws were disclosed last week in an industry-wide effort nine months
in the making, it remains unclear in many cases which devices were vulnerable to which vulnerabilities and which vulnerabilities,
if any, have received security updates. It's almost a certainty that many Wi-Fi-enabled devices will never be fixed.
Rogue DNS injection
One of the most severe vulnerabilities in the FragAttacks suite resides in the
Wi-Fi specification itself. Tracked as CVE-2020-24588, the flaw can be exploited in a way that forces Wi-Fi devices to use a
rogue DNS server, which in turn can deliver users to malicious websites rather than the ones they intended. From there, hackers
can read and modify any unencrypted traffic. Rogue DNS servers also allow hackers to perform
DNS
rebinding attacks
, in which malicious websites manipulate a browser to attack other devices connected to the same network.
The rogue DNS server is introduced when an attacker injects an
ICMPv6
Router Advertisement
into Wi-Fi traffic. Routers typically issue these announcements so other devices on the network can
locate them. The injected advertisement instructs all devices to use a DNS specified by the attacker for lookups of both IPv6 and
IPv4 addresses.
In an email, Vanhoef explained, saying, "The IPv6 router advertisement is put
in the payload (i.e. data portion) of the TCP packet. This data is by default passed on to the application that created the TCP
connection. In the demo, that would be the browser, which is expecting an image. This means that by default, the client won't
process the IPv6 router advertisement but instead process the TCP payload as application data."
Vanhoef said that it's possible to perform the attack without user interaction
when the target's access point is vulnerable to
CVE-2021-26139
,
one of the 12 vulnerabilities that make up the FragAttacks package. The security flaw stems from a kernel flaw in NetBSD 7.1 that
causes Wi-Fi access points to forward
Extensible
Authentication Protocol (AP) over LAN
frames to other devices even when the sender has not yet authenticated to the AP.
It's safe to skip ahead, but for those curious about the specific software bug
and the reason the video demo uses a malicious image, Vanhoef explained:
To make the victim process the TCP payload (i.e. data portion) as a separate
packet, the aggregation design flaw in Wi-Fi is abused. That is, the attacker intercepts the malicious TCP packet at the Wi-Fi
layer and sets the "is aggregated" flag in the Wi-Fi header. As a result, the receiver will split the Wi-Fi frame into two
network packets. The first network packet contains part of the original TCP header and is discarded. The second packet
corresponds with the TCP payload, which we made sure will now correspond to the ICMPv6 packet, and as a result, the ICMPv6
router advertisement is now processed by the victim as a separate packet. So proximity to the victim is required to set the
"is aggregated" Wi-Fi flag so that the malicious TCP packet will be split into two by the receiver.
The design flaw is that an adversary can change/set the "is aggregated" flag
without the receiver noticing this. This flag should have been authenticated so that a receiver can detect if it has been
modified.
It's possible to perform the attack without user interaction when the
access point is vulnerable to CVE-2020-26139. Out of four tested home routers, two of them had this vulnerability. It seems
that most Linux-based routers are affected by this vulnerability. The research paper discusses in more detail how this
works -- essentially, instead of including the ICMPV6 router advertisement in a malicious TCP packet, it can then be included in
an unencrypted handshake message (which the AP will then forward to the client after which the adversary can again set the "is
aggregated" flag etc).
Punching a hole in
the firewall
Four of the 12 vulnerabilities that make up the FragAttacks are implementation
flaws, meaning they stem from bugs that software developers introduced when writing code based on the Wi-Fi specification. An
attacker can exploit them against access points to bypass a key security benefit they provide.
Besides allowing multiple devices to share a single Internet connection,
routers prevent incoming traffic from reaching connected devices unless the devices have requested it. This firewall works by
using network address translation, or NAT, which maps private IP addresses that the AP assigns each device on the local network
to a single IP address that the AP uses to send data over the Internet.
The result is that routers forward data to connected devices only when they
have previously requested it from a website, email server, or other machine on the Internet. When one of those machines tries to
send unsolicited data to a device behind the router, the router automatically discards it. This arrangement
isn't
perfect
, but it does provide a vital defense that protects billions of devices.
Vanhoef figured out how to exploit the four vulnerabilities in a way that
allows an attacker to, as he put it, "punch a hole through a router's firewall." With the ability to connect directly to devices
behind a firewall, an Internet attacker can then send them malicious code or commands.
In one demo in the video, Vanhoef exploits the vulnerabilities to control an
Internet-of-things device, specifically to remotely turn on and off a smart power socket. Normally, NAT would prevent a device
outside the network from interacting with the socket unless the socket had first initiated a connection. The implementation
exploits remove this barrier.
FURTHER READING
Microsoft practically begs Windows users to fix wormable BlueKeep flaw
In a separate demo, Vanhoef shows how the vulnerabilities allow a device on the Internet to initiate a connection with a computer
running Windows 7, an operating system that stopped receiving security updates years ago. The researcher used that ability to
gain complete control over the PC by sending it malicious code that exploited a
critical
vulnerability called BlueKeep
.
"That means that when an access point is
vulnerable, it becomes easy to attack clients!" Vanhoef wrote. "So we're abusing the Wi-Fi implementation flaws in an
access
point
as a first step in order to subsequently attack (outdated)
clients
."
Getting your fix
Despite Vanhoef spending nine months coordinating patches with more than a
dozen hardware and software makers, it's not easy to figure out which devices or software are vulnerable to which
vulnerabilities, and of those vulnerable products, which ones have received fixes.
This page
provides the status for products from several companies. A more comprehensive list of known advisories is
here
.
Other advisories are available individually from their respective vendors. The vulnerabilities to look for are:
Design flaws:
CVE-2020-24588
: aggregation attack (accepting non-SPP A-MSDU frames)
CVE-2020-24587
: mixed key attack (reassembling fragments encrypted under different keys)
CVE-2020-24586
: fragment cache attack (not clearing fragments from memory when (re)connecting to a network)
Implementation
vulnerabilities allowing the injection of plaintext frames:
CVE-2020-26145
: Accepting plaintext broadcast fragments as full frames (in an encrypted network)
CVE-2020-26144
: Accepting plaintext A-MSDU frames that start with an RFC1042 header with EtherType EAPOL (in an encrypted
network)
CVE-2020-26140
: Accepting plaintext data frames in a protected network
CVE-2020-26143
: Accepting fragmented plaintext data frames in a protected network
Other implementation
flaws:
CVE-2020-26139
: Forwarding EAPOL frames even though the sender is not yet authenticated (should only affect APs)
CVE-2020-26146
: Reassembling encrypted fragments with non-consecutive packet numbers
CVE-2020-26147
: Reassembling mixed encrypted/plaintext fragments
CVE-2020-26142
: Processing fragmented frames as full frames
CVE-2020-26141
: Not verifying the TKIP MIC of fragmented frames
The most effective way to mitigate the threat posed by FragAttacks is to
install all available updates that fix the vulnerabilities. Users will have to do this on each vulnerable computer, router, or
other Internet-of-things device. It's likely that a huge number of affected devices will never receive a patch.
The next-best mitigation is to ensure that websites are always using HTTPS
connections. That's because the encryption HTTPS provides greatly reduces the damage that can be done when a malicious DNS server
directs a victim to a fake website.
Sites that use HTTP Strict Transport Security will always use this protection,
but Vanhoef said that only about 20 percent of the web does this. Browser extensions like
HTTPS
everywhere
were already a good idea, and the mitigation they provide against FragAttacks makes them even more worthwhile.
As noted earlier, FragAttacks aren't likely to be exploited against the vast
majority of Wi-Fi users, since the exploits require a high degree of skill as well as proximity -- meaning within 100 feet to a
half-mile, depending on the equipment used -- to the target. The vulnerabilities pose a higher threat to networks used by high-value
targets such as retail chains, embassies, or corporate networks where security is key, and then most likely only in concert with
other exploits.
When updates become available, by all means install them, but unless you're in
this latter group, remember that drive-by downloads and other more mundane types of attacks will probably pose a bigger threat.
Promoted Comments
When I'm networking I always assume the network I'm connected to is completely compromised, so all my devices use these things
and are properly firewalled in which case these attacks are pretty much worthless.
While only new versions of Android support DoT out of the box on the system level, Google has recently added the support for
DoH to Chrome, so in case your device is running an older version of Android you might want to enable DoH in Chrome to feel
safe.
And as for Firefox it's had the support for DoH for years. I've gone as far as to set network.trr.mode to 2 in about:config to
be extra safe. 3 is even better:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver
178 posts | register
Strange news of the fatherland... knowing what is going on in Germany right now is helpful
to understanding the strange goings on in the USAi and its dreams of eternal empire. It ain't
clear sailing yet for NS2!
If your country is part of an international empire, the domestic politics of the country
that rules yours are your domestic politics too. Whoever speaks of the Europe of the EU
must therefore also speak of Germany. Currently it is widely believed that after the German
federal elections of 24 September this year, Europe will enter a post-Merkel era. The truth
is not so simple.
In October 2018, following two devastating defeats in state elections in Hesse and
Bavaria, Angela Merkel resigned as president of her party, the CDU, and announced that she
would not seek re-election as Chancellor in 2021. She would, however, serve out her fourth
term, to which she had been officially appointed only seven months earlier.
Putting together a coalition government had taken no less than six months following the
September 2017 federal election, in which the CDU and its Bavarian sidekick, the CSU, had
scored the worst result in their history, at 32.9 percent (2013: 41.5 percent). (Merkel's
record as party leader is nothing short of dismal, having lost votes each time she ran. How
she could nevertheless remain Chancellor for 16 years will have to be explained elsewhere.)
In the subsequent contest for the CDU presidency, the party's general secretary, Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer, appointed by Merkel only in February 2018, narrowly prevailed over two
competitors.
After little more than a year, however, when Merkel publicly dressed her down for a lack
of leadership, Kramp-Karrenbauer resigned and declared that she would not run for
Chancellor in 2021 either. A few months later, when von der Leyen went to Brussels,
Kramp-Karrenbauer got Merkel to appoint her minister of defense. The next contest for the
party presidency, the second in Merkel's fourth term, had to take place under Corona
restrictions; it took a long time and was won in January 2021 by Armin Laschet, Prime
Minister of the largest federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). To prevent the
comeback of an old foe of hers, Friedrich Merz, Merkel allegedly supported Laschet behind
the scenes.
While Laschet – a less-than-charismatic Christian-Democratic middle-of-the-roader
and lifelong Merkel loyalist – considered the party presidency to be a ticket to the
CDU/CSU candidacy for Chancellor, it took three months for this to be settled. As CDU/CSU
politics go, the joint candidate is picked by the two party presidents when they feel the
time has come, under four eyes; no formal procedure provided.
Thus Laschet needed the agreement of Markus Söder, Prime Minister of Bavaria, who
didn't keep it a secret that he believed himself the far better choice. In the background,
again, there was Merkel, in the unprecedented position of a sitting Chancellor watching the
presidents of her two parties pick her would-be successor in something like a semi-public
cock-fight. After some dramatic toing-and-froing, Laschet prevailed, once more supported by
Merkel, apparently in exchange for his state's backing for the federal government imposing
a 'hard' Covid-19 lockdown on the entire country...
...There will also be differences on the Eastern flank of the EU, where Baerbock,
following the United States, will support Ukrainian accession to NATO and the EU, and
finance EU extension in the West Balkans. That she will also cancel North Stream 2 will
be a point of contention in a Baerbock/Scholz government.
Laschet will be more inclined towards France and seek some accommodation with Russia, on
trade as well as security; he will also hesitate to be too strongly identified with the US
on Eastern Europe and Ukraine. But then, he will be reminded by his Foreign Minister,
Baerbock, as well as his own party that Germany's national security depends on the American
nuclear umbrella, which the French cannot and in any case will not replace. (my
emphasis)
"... What is clear is that the FBI is taking a thumb-screws page from the playbook of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who deployed the little-used Foreign Agents Registration Act to pursue the white whale of collusion. As Lee Smith reported for RealClearInvestigations , just three people had pleaded guilty to FARA violations in the half-century before Mueller deployed it to pressure and punish Trump allies. ..."
"... And note, the FBI's zeal to crack down on unregistered foreign agents does not extend to the president's son Hunter Biden, who, Paul Sperry reported for RCI, "failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials." It appears that we have two tiers of justice: one for Biden administration enemies, another for its family and friends. ..."
The Biden administration is vigorously pursuing key figures from the phony Trump/Russia collusion scandal that roiled the nation
for four years. But instead of trying to punish the liars who perpetrated that fraud, it is targeting the truth-tellers who challenged
and exposed the conspiracy to negate the 2016 election.
Working from the same playbook used to smear dozens of Trump associates, the administration and its allies are planting stories
based on blind quotes in friendly media outlets to seek revenge.
On April 16,
Washington
Post columnist David Ignatius reported that the Justice Department is investigating Kash Patel – who had worked with Rep. Devin
Nunes and later the Trump administration to reveal the Russiagate hoax – for the "possible improper disclosure of classified information."
Ignatius said he received the tip from "two knowledgeable sources" who "wouldn't provide additional details."
Violating the bedrock principles of American justice and journalism, this article is an exercise in thuggery as the government
uses a powerful media outlet to intimidate and besmirch a citizen without evidence. With nothing to respond to, how can Patel defend
himself? If Patel is lucky, the federal government has only placed a sharp sword over his head that may not fall. If not, he might
be dragged into a lengthy court battle that could drain his finances and also cost him his freedom.
We don't know if Patel broke the law, but note that the administration has shown no interest in pursuing former FBI leaders such
as
James Comey and
Andrew McCabe , who improperly disclosed information regarding Russiagate.
Trump's former lawyer Rudolph Giuliani is also in the "cross hairs of a federal criminal investigation," according to
an April 29
article in New York Times that relied on "people with knowledge of the matter."
At issue, those anonymous sources say, is whether Giuliani was serving two masters when he counseled Trump to remove Marie L.
Yovanovitch as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2019. "Did Mr. Giuliani go after Ms. Yovanovitch solely on behalf of Mr. Trump,
who was his client at the time?" the Times reports. "Or was he also doing so on behalf of the Ukrainian officials, who wanted her
removed for their own reasons?"
I'll leave it to the lawyers to determine the wisdom of bringing a case based on the parsing of tangled motives. What is clear
is that the FBI is taking a thumb-screws page from the playbook of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who deployed the little-used Foreign
Agents Registration Act to pursue the white whale of collusion.
As Lee Smith reported for RealClearInvestigations , just three people had pleaded guilty to FARA violations in the half-century
before Mueller deployed it to pressure and punish Trump allies.
And note, the FBI's zeal to crack down on unregistered foreign agents does not extend to the president's son Hunter Biden, who,
Paul Sperry reported for RCI, "failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in
Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials." It appears that we have two tiers of justice:
one for Biden administration enemies, another for its family and friends.
The targeting of Giuliani looks especially suspect and politically motivated after three main news outlets that have driven much
of the false Russiagate coverage – the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News –
were forced to correct a recent story , once again based on anonymous sources, claiming the FBI had warned Giuliani in 2019 "that
he was a target of a Russian disinformation campaign during his efforts to dig up unflattering information about then-candidate Joe
Biden in 2019." Giuliani was never given such a briefing.
Considering the numerous instances in which the press published bogus information from "informed sources" during Russiagate, one
has to ask why they continue to serve as vehicles for falsehoods. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me
a dozen times and you're not fooling me – we're acting in concert. As RCI editor
Tom Kuntz has argued, journalistic integrity demands, at the very least, that these organizations tell their audience who exactly
had misled them. Confidentiality agreements should not protect liars.
A third example of the Biden administration's effort to punish Russiagate figures is its renewed effort to put former Manafort
associate Konstantin V. Kilimnik behind bars. In an extensive new article for RCI,
Aaron Maté reports that the Treasury Department provided no evidence to support its recent claim that Kilimnik is a "known Russian
Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf." It also refuses to explain how it was able to discover
the truth of Kilimnik's identity, which the two most extensive Russiagate investigations – the 448-page Muller report and the 966-page
Senate Intelligence report – failed to uncover.
This absence of evidence has not stopped the peddlers of the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory from claiming vindication. Democrat
Rep. Adam Schiff casts Treasury's unsubstantiated claim as smoking-gun evidence of collusion. The New York Times reports that the
claim demonstrates that "there had been numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the year
before the [2016] election."
Who needs proof when the government says it's so?
The FBI is also putting the screws to Kilimnik, offering $250,000 for information leading to his arrest on witness-tampering charges
involving text messages he sent in 2018 to two people who have only been identified as "potential witnesses" involving Manafort's
lobbying work for Ukraine, not Russiagate.
In an exclusive interview, Kilimnik told Maté, "I don't understand how two messages to our old partners who helped us get out
the message about Ukraine's integration aspirations in [the] EU, and asking them to get in touch with Paul, can be interpreted as
'intimidation' or 'obstruction of justice.'"
Maté also reports that the $250,000 bounty on Kilimnik is more than double the amount the FBI is offering for information leading
to the arrest of murder suspects.
The Biden administration's campaigns against Patel, Giuliani and Kilimnik suggest how the winners of the 2020 election are attempting
to rewrite the history of Russiagate. Having been debunked and rebuked by their own investigators, the conspiracists are taking a
second bite at the poisoned apple. Using anonymous sources to make unsubstantiated charges in the nation's most influential news
outlets, they are seeking to punish people for the crime of exposing their malfeasance.
"... What is clear is that the FBI is taking a thumb-screws page from the playbook of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who deployed the little-used Foreign Agents Registration Act to pursue the white whale of collusion. As Lee Smith reported for RealClearInvestigations , just three people had pleaded guilty to FARA violations in the half-century before Mueller deployed it to pressure and punish Trump allies. ..."
"... And note, the FBI's zeal to crack down on unregistered foreign agents does not extend to the president's son Hunter Biden, who, Paul Sperry reported for RCI, "failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials." It appears that we have two tiers of justice: one for Biden administration enemies, another for its family and friends. ..."
The Biden administration is vigorously pursuing key figures from the phony Trump/Russia collusion scandal that roiled the nation
for four years. But instead of trying to punish the liars who perpetrated that fraud, it is targeting the truth-tellers who challenged
and exposed the conspiracy to negate the 2016 election.
Working from the same playbook used to smear dozens of Trump associates, the administration and its allies are planting stories
based on blind quotes in friendly media outlets to seek revenge.
On April 16,
Washington
Post columnist David Ignatius reported that the Justice Department is investigating Kash Patel – who had worked with Rep. Devin
Nunes and later the Trump administration to reveal the Russiagate hoax – for the "possible improper disclosure of classified information."
Ignatius said he received the tip from "two knowledgeable sources" who "wouldn't provide additional details."
Violating the bedrock principles of American justice and journalism, this article is an exercise in thuggery as the government
uses a powerful media outlet to intimidate and besmirch a citizen without evidence. With nothing to respond to, how can Patel defend
himself? If Patel is lucky, the federal government has only placed a sharp sword over his head that may not fall. If not, he might
be dragged into a lengthy court battle that could drain his finances and also cost him his freedom.
We don't know if Patel broke the law, but note that the administration has shown no interest in pursuing former FBI leaders such
as
James Comey and
Andrew McCabe , who improperly disclosed information regarding Russiagate.
Trump's former lawyer Rudolph Giuliani is also in the "cross hairs of a federal criminal investigation," according to
an April 29
article in New York Times that relied on "people with knowledge of the matter."
At issue, those anonymous sources say, is whether Giuliani was serving two masters when he counseled Trump to remove Marie L.
Yovanovitch as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2019. "Did Mr. Giuliani go after Ms. Yovanovitch solely on behalf of Mr. Trump,
who was his client at the time?" the Times reports. "Or was he also doing so on behalf of the Ukrainian officials, who wanted her
removed for their own reasons?"
I'll leave it to the lawyers to determine the wisdom of bringing a case based on the parsing of tangled motives. What is clear
is that the FBI is taking a thumb-screws page from the playbook of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who deployed the little-used Foreign
Agents Registration Act to pursue the white whale of collusion.
As Lee Smith reported for RealClearInvestigations , just three people had pleaded guilty to FARA violations in the half-century
before Mueller deployed it to pressure and punish Trump allies.
And note, the FBI's zeal to crack down on unregistered foreign agents does not extend to the president's son Hunter Biden, who,
Paul Sperry reported for RCI, "failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in
Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials." It appears that we have two tiers of justice:
one for Biden administration enemies, another for its family and friends.
The targeting of Giuliani looks especially suspect and politically motivated after three main news outlets that have driven much
of the false Russiagate coverage – the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News –
were forced to correct a recent story , once again based on anonymous sources, claiming the FBI had warned Giuliani in 2019 "that
he was a target of a Russian disinformation campaign during his efforts to dig up unflattering information about then-candidate Joe
Biden in 2019." Giuliani was never given such a briefing.
Considering the numerous instances in which the press published bogus information from "informed sources" during Russiagate, one
has to ask why they continue to serve as vehicles for falsehoods. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me
a dozen times and you're not fooling me – we're acting in concert. As RCI editor
Tom Kuntz has argued, journalistic integrity demands, at the very least, that these organizations tell their audience who exactly
had misled them. Confidentiality agreements should not protect liars.
A third example of the Biden administration's effort to punish Russiagate figures is its renewed effort to put former Manafort
associate Konstantin V. Kilimnik behind bars. In an extensive new article for RCI,
Aaron Maté reports that the Treasury Department provided no evidence to support its recent claim that Kilimnik is a "known Russian
Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf." It also refuses to explain how it was able to discover
the truth of Kilimnik's identity, which the two most extensive Russiagate investigations – the 448-page Muller report and the 966-page
Senate Intelligence report – failed to uncover.
This absence of evidence has not stopped the peddlers of the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory from claiming vindication. Democrat
Rep. Adam Schiff casts Treasury's unsubstantiated claim as smoking-gun evidence of collusion. The New York Times reports that the
claim demonstrates that "there had been numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the year
before the [2016] election."
Who needs proof when the government says it's so?
The FBI is also putting the screws to Kilimnik, offering $250,000 for information leading to his arrest on witness-tampering charges
involving text messages he sent in 2018 to two people who have only been identified as "potential witnesses" involving Manafort's
lobbying work for Ukraine, not Russiagate.
In an exclusive interview, Kilimnik told Maté, "I don't understand how two messages to our old partners who helped us get out
the message about Ukraine's integration aspirations in [the] EU, and asking them to get in touch with Paul, can be interpreted as
'intimidation' or 'obstruction of justice.'"
Maté also reports that the $250,000 bounty on Kilimnik is more than double the amount the FBI is offering for information leading
to the arrest of murder suspects.
The Biden administration's campaigns against Patel, Giuliani and Kilimnik suggest how the winners of the 2020 election are attempting
to rewrite the history of Russiagate. Having been debunked and rebuked by their own investigators, the conspiracists are taking a
second bite at the poisoned apple. Using anonymous sources to make unsubstantiated charges in the nation's most influential news
outlets, they are seeking to punish people for the crime of exposing their malfeasance.
Trump represented a FACTION
of the establishment. Which one? He did their bidding and in the process alienated other
factions. The other factions worked together to get him replaced. There are factions within
neocons, neoliberals and establishment. It is a nuanced and complex structure, not
monolithic. It is misleading to state, "he publicly broke away from the American oligarchy's
class interests".
Trump's biggest MISTAKE was that he didn't build a good sounding board of advisors. He
surrounded himself with his family members and believed his orders will be implemented like a
corporate president. Jared Kushner is a Bilderberg. So Trump was connected to the global
syndicate and part of the swamp.
The unipolar order ended in 2014/15 and the multipolar order is establishing. The U$A or
NATO can't launch a foreign war like they did in Libya. Russia and China have warned the
Financial Empire and defined the redlines. This is the reason behind Trump not launching a
new major foreign war. Will Biden launch a new war? However, Trump did launch hybrid wars in
Venezuela, Bolivia, Belarus,... Trump didn't break from FOREIGN adventures.
During Trump's term:
– How many bombs were dropped?
– How much new DEBT was created?
– How much did the money supply increase by?
– What happened to the trade deficit?
Im a nurse and im not allowed to give medical advice or I'll lose my license only a doctor
can give advice so bill gates needs to be put in prison send this to him
Gates And Epstein Traded Advice On Bill's 'Toxic' Marriage, Jeff's Pedo Image Rehab
During Secretive "Men's Club" Gatherings BY TYLER DURDEN MONDAY, MAY 17, 2021 - 03:11
PM
A former Jeffrey Epstein insider claims that Bill Gates was a regular at the notorious
pedophile's $77 million Manhattan townhouse, where Epstein held "men's club" - type gatherings
for his closest pals (documented by his home's alleged network of spy cameras, we're sure).
For Gates, "Going to Jeffrey's was a respite from his marriage. It was a way of getting away
from Melinda " according to one of two insiders , who came forward to the
Daily Beast to break what we're guessing is the first rule of elite pedo-lair club.
According to the report, Gates and Epstein traded advice over their respective problems,
while Gates " met a rotating cast of bold-faced names and discussed worldly issues in between
rounds of jokes and gossip -- a "men's club" atmosphere that irritated Melinda."
Gates used the gatherings at
Epstein's $77 million New York townhouse as an escape from what he told Epstein was a
"toxic" marriage, a topic both men found humorous , a person who attended the meetings told
The Daily Beast.
The billionaire met Epstein dozens of times starting in 2011 and continuing through to
2014 mostly at the financier's Manhattan home -- a substantially higher number than has been
previously reported. Their conversations took place years before Bill
and Melinda Gates announced this month that they were splitting up .
Gates, in turn, encouraged Epstein to rehabilitate his image in the media following his
2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor for prostitution , and discussed Epstein becoming
involved with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. -Daily Beast
According to one of the insiders, Epstein and Gates "were very close."
A spokesperson for Gates (fleet of attorneys) told the Beast "Your characterization of his
meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated.
Similarly, any claim that Gates spoke of his marriage or Melinda in a disparaging manner is
false ."
"Bill never received or solicited personal advice of any kind from Epstein -- on marriage or
anything else. Bill never complained about Melinda or his marriage to Epstein," the rep
continued.
According to the Beast , "
Melinda Gates was furious over Bill's relationship with Epstein, and was put off by the
creepy financier upon meeting him in September 2013, after the couple accepted an award at a
New York City hotel. Melinda's anger, people familiar with the matter said, eventually led to
the demise of Bill and Epstein's friendship."
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal just reported that Melinda began consulting divorce
attorneys in October, 2019 - right around the time it was revealed that Bill and Epstein were
pals . What's more, Microsoft board members wanted Bill gone in late 2019 after an internal
investigation revealed that Gates had an
inappropriate sexual relationship with a female Microsoft employee. play_arrow
ItsAllBollocks 1 hour ago (Edited)
Funny how the media never reports the obvious. Bill's divorce has nothing to do with
marital breakdown and everything to do with protecting his assets. Looks like old Bill just
might get thrown under the bus like they did with his pal Epstein. They're going to need a
scapegoat when the excreta starts to splatter and who's better than Bill? I just hope he
takes Schwab, Fauci and all the rest of them with him...
As for Epstein, try typing 'Epstein's victims' into google images and A/ find a victim who
isn't loving every minute of it, B/ find a victim under the age of 16, C/ explain why anyone
would go to all the trouble and risk coercing someone to do what damn near all women will do
willingly and D/ as you know the media lies, why you believe every word of it...
truth or go home 42 minutes ago
Do you actually believe there will be a trial for "crimes against humanity" under the
current system?
That's dumber than believing covid vaxx is "safe".
AlGorerythm 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Epstein was hired by a former OSS guy to teach high school teens STEM classes... although
he was technically not a teacher at all.
That OSS guy was the father of Dr. Trump's Attorney General who is also a washington swamp
creature - Bill Barr
Michael Musashi 4 hours ago
This is all that matters. This stupid relationship with Epstein is a distraction. Gates
and Fauchi knew what was going on in Wuhan, and this is what matters. Dump all this gossipy
women's crap!
RiverRoad 3 hours ago
As soon as Covid was declared a Pandemic, Gates announced that he was resigning ALL of his
positions at Microsoft to dedicate his time to Covid. What a timely COVER Covid provided him
for his simultaneous FORCED EXIT from Microsoft.
Sprumford 7 hours ago (Edited)
Epstein ran one big blackmail operation IMO.
HungryPorkChop 6 hours ago
That Epstein pedo island seemed to be nothing but a way to entrap and blackmail wealthy
individuals. That's the main reason they need to release the manifesto is a lot of these
people "obviously" still hold high positions and are probably compromised.
TonTon 6 hours ago
He went from Chief Global Philanthropist to Blue Screen of Death in less time than it
takes to fake a Jeffrey Epstein suicide.
TheySayIAmOkay 7 hours ago
So, Melinda was bothered by Bill going to bang 15 year olds from Ukraine over at Epstein's
place? But not bothered enough to ever say anything...
GreatCaesar'sGhost 7 hours ago
Who knows what threats she faced? Not everyone has it in them to be a hero. At least she's
getting out now.
scoop2020 7 hours ago remove link
Imagine how those conversations went? Hey Jeff, my marriage sucks. No worries Bill...
Give Me Some Truth 7 hours ago (Edited)
Maybe someone should ask prosecutors with the Department of Justice why they haven't
questioned a single "John" in the decades-long sex trafficking operation run by Epstein and
Ghislaine Maxwell.
Give Me Some Truth 7 hours ago
If the FBI really "investigated" the Epstein sex trafficking operation ... it would also
have to investigate - and expose - the FBI, which clearly knew all about it for probably
decades.
Give Me Some Truth 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link
"Leave Epstein alone. He's intelligence." This (alleged) comment was made to a U.S.
prosecutor working for the U.S. Department of Justice. Has this charge really been
investigated? Who passed along this order and why?
Also, much has been written about the photo of Virginia Giuffre with Prince Andrew, taken
at Ghislaine Maxwell's London townhouse. Some have speculated the photo is a fake. Well,
Virginia Giuffre gave the original photo to ... FBI agents in 2011.
Would she have given them the photo if it was really a fake? What did the FBI agents do
with the photo? Don't you think they confirmed it was a legit photo? And what was this girl
from the wrong side of the tracks in Palm Bech Florida doing meeting a Prince in London? Why
did Epstein and Maxwell fly her to London in the first place? So they could let a teenage
stranger do some sightseeing?
McGantic 7 hours ago (Edited)
Man, did Gates piss someone off or what?
Larry Dallas 7 hours ago
Best sentence is the last one:
"Come to think of it, maybe someone should ask Larry Summers if he was ever in Epstein's
"men's club" at the pedo lair."
StackShinyStuff 5 hours ago
These people are sick.
Paleocrat 6 hours ago
Notice all the media badmouthing of Gates who was just a nerdy hero a few weeks ago. This
isn't accidental. He's being set up to take a fall. COVID?
They have a lot of work to do. There is a suspicion among cynics like myself that GOP
bossmen conspired with DNC to rig 2020 for the opposition.
Moribund Mitch was congratulating Catatonic Joe while the election was still contested and
GA runoff polls were still open. Mike Pence folded up like a ten dollar suitcase.
SurfingUSA 7 hours ago remove link
"Suspicion" ????
Those facts are locked down. See the following GOP champions of Domino Ion Voting with
documented roles in getting the equipment and obstructing investigations:
Note Domino Ion election management is to an extent a front for the CCP.
chunga 7 hours ago
The recount thing in AZ is a stunt as far as I'm concerned. Nobody ever bothered to
question suitcase girl. It is inexplicable.
YuriTheClown 7 hours ago
Don't do the China thing. That is the Republican version of Russia! Russia! Russia!
While I am sure China spreads the cheese around we all know it's the Giewash Mob banking
cartel that is firmly in control. The Cartel can shut off Chinese Cheese in a heart beat when
desired. They just like using other people's money.
19331510 3 hours ago
Main street does not want perpetual wars, why do you think Trump was elected for a second
time?
Miniminer1 8 hours ago
CNN and the msm will keep putting her on TV like she's important and telling their few
viewers she might be president and will go after evil trump and thereby keeping the
brainwashing alive . Keep fighting for justice president trump!!!
No_Pretzel_Logic 7 hours ago
CIA News Network is 100% Deep State operated.
I can flip to that channel anytime of day and within 120 seconds I am pointing at the TV
and saying, "Liars!"
It is almost completely Pravda-programming and remains a real threat to this country. Same
with MSDNC.
YuriTheClown 7 hours ago
You watch TV????
aegis551 8 hours ago
Cheneys is a neocons and a globalist. Hopefully the good people of Wyoming can see that
and kick this POS to the curb.
Paul Bunyan 8 hours ago
Darth Cheney is not pleased the GOP has discredited his daughter. I am sure he and the
Bushes will be doing everything they can to keep Trump from running in '24.
SPACE-CADET 8 hours ago
Little Bush killed 10,000 americans and over 1 million Iraq.
He retired to Texas with a cushy pension.
Paul Bunyan 8 hours ago (Edited)
Never mind the pension. The Bushes are American royalty and British royals before it. His
mother Barbara is a Pierce, as in the former POTUS and NYC banking dynasty. Everyone knows
CIA asset George Sr. Then there is patriarch Prescott who was a Senator, a banker with the
Harrimans ( THE bank that funneled Nazi money through Wall Street) and a Scull and bonesman
(as was GHWB and GWB). Then there is Uncle Bert Walker, where both names Herbert and Walker
come from. This man traces both names back to British royalty, where both the Herberts and
Walkers ruled on the British courts for hundreds of years. So for pensions, these families
have power and wealth that can not be imagined.
YuriTheClown 7 hours ago
Nah. As per Eustace Mullins ( a national treasure his recordings )
Bushes served Harrimans
Harrimans served Rothschilds
Bushes are high functionaries
arby63 7 hours ago
They all hated Trump because he wasn't in the club. This scum Cheney is a name I've had to
endure for 40 years.
Thats why they hated Trump. He wasn't one of them.
In an interview with Fox News ' Bret Baier this week, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she
spread the
discredited CIA "Russian bounty" story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban
fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The
New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced
his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous
intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats --
led by Cheney -- to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited
when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month
that it had only "low to moderate confidence" that any of this even happened.
When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney
blatantly lied to him, claiming "if you go back and look at what I said -- every single thing I
said : I said if those stories are true , we need to know why the President and Vice President
were not briefed on them." After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with
credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke
conditionally, always using the "if these reports are true" formulation. Watch Cheney deny her
role in spreading that story.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fd6u_p0K9aE
Liz Cheney, as she so often does, blatantly lied. That she merely spoke of the Russian
bounty story in the conditional -- " every single thing I said: I said if those stories are
true" -- is completely and demonstrably false. Indeed, other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) , there are few if
any members of Congress who did more to spread this Russian bounty story as proven truth, all
in order to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, she borrowed from a pro-war
playbook pioneered by her dad, to whom she owes her career: the former Vice President
would leak CIA claims to The New York Times to justify war, then go on Meet the Press with
Tim Russert, as he did on September
8, 2002 , and cite those New York Times reports as though they were independent
confirmation of his views coming from that paper rather than from him:
MR. RUSSERT: What, specifically, has [Saddam] obtained that you believe would enhance his
nuclear development program? ..
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or
highly enriched uranium. And what we've seen recently that has raised our level of concern to
the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is
trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able
to enrich uranium to make the bombs.
MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There's a story in The New York Times this
morning this is -- I don't -- and I want to attribute The Times . I don't want to talk about,
obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it's now public that, in fact, [Saddam] has
been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring
through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge.
And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched
uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.
So having CIA stories leak to the press that fuel the pro-war case, then having pro-war
politicians cite those to justify their pro-war position, is a Cheney Family speciality.
On July 1, the House Armed Services Committee, of which Rep. Cheney is a member, debated
amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that authorized $740.5 billion
in military spending. One of Cheney's top priorities was to align with the Committee's pro-war
Democrats, funded by weapons manufacturers, to block Trump's plan to withdraw all U.S. troops
from Afghanistan by the end of 2020 and to withdraw roughly 1/3 of the 34,000 U.S. troops in
Germany.
To justify her opposition, Cheney -- contrary to what she repeatedly insisted to Baier --
cited the CIA's Russian bounty story without skepticism . In a joint statement with Rep. Mac
Thornberry (R-TX), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, that Cheney published
on her website on June 27 -- the same day that The New York Times published its first story
about the CIA tale -- Cheney pronounced herself "concerned about Russian activity in
Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces." There was nothing
conditional about the statement: they were preparing to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan
and cited this story as proof that "Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan."
After today's briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about
Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces. It
has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan. We believe it
is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country
targeting our forces. Congress has no more important obligation than providing for the
security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need.
An even more definitive use of this Russia bounty story came when Cheney held a press
conference to explain her opposition to Trump's plans to withdraw troops. In this statement,
she proclaimed that she "remains concerned about Russian activities in Afghanistan." She then
explicitly threatened Russia over the CIA's "bounty" story, warning them that "any targeting of
U.S. forces by Russians, by anyone else, will face a very swift and deadly response." She then
gloated about the U.S. bombing of Russia-linked troops in Syria in 2018 using what she called
"overwhelming and lethal force," and warned that this would happen again if they target U.S.
forces in Afghanistan:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_NUXZog_Vf0
Does this sound even remotely like what Cheney claimed to Baier? She denied having played a
key role in spreading the Russia bounty story because, as she put it, " every single thing I
said, I said: if those stories are true." She also told him that she never referred to that CIA
claim except by saying: "if these reports are true." That is false.
The issue is not merely that Cheney lied: that would hardly be news. It is that the entire
media narrative about Cheney's removal from her House leadership role is a fraud. Her attacks
on Trump and her party leadership were not confined to criticisms of the role played by the
former president in contesting the validity of the 2020 election outcome or inciting the
January 6 Capitol riot -- because Liz Cheney is such a stalwart defender of the need for truth
and adherence to the rule of law in politics.
Cheney played the key role in
forming an alliance with pro-war Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee to
repeatedly defeat the bipartisan anti-war minority [led by Ro Khanna (D-CA), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard
(D-HI) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] to prevent any meaningful changes promised by Trump during
the 2016 campaign to put an end to the U.S. posture of Endless War. As I
reported about the House Armed Services Committee hearing last July, the CIA tale was
repeatedly cited by Cheney and her allies to justify ongoing U.S. troop presence in
Afghanistan.
I was surprised by the extent of it. I knew fundamentally from my own experience that changing national policies is like trying to change the course of an aircraft carrier. These policies in many ways were set long ago, and the national security bureaucracy tends to favor the status quo. Still, I thought that a president like Obama would, with the political wind in his sails and with so much public and congressional support for what he was criticizing, be more successful in fulfilling his promises.
MintPress News | Alexander Rubinstein | Mar 6, 2019 Opposing some dictatorships, supporting others
