William Binney is the former technical director of the U.S. National Security Agency who
worked at the agency for 30 years. He is a respected independent critic of how American
intelligence services abuse their powers to illegally spy on private communications of U.S.
citizens and around the globe.
Given his expert inside knowledge, it is worth paying attention to what Binney says.
In a media
interview this week, he dismissed the so-called Russiagate scandal as a "fabrication"
orchestrated by the American Central Intelligence Agency. Many other observers have come to
the same conclusion about allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections with
the objective of helping Donald Trump get elected.
But what is particularly valuable about Binney's judgment is that he cites technical
analysis disproving the Russiagate narrative. That narrative remains dominant among U.S.
intelligence officials, politicians and pundits, especially those affiliated with the
Democrat party, as well as large sections of Western media. The premise of the narrative is
the allegation that a Russian state-backed cyber operation hacked into the database and
emails of the Democrat party back in 2016. The information perceived as damaging to
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was subsequently disseminated to the Wikileaks
whistleblower site and other U.S. media outlets.
A mysterious cyber persona known as "Guccifer 2.0" claimed to be the alleged hacker. U.S.
intelligence and news media have attributed Guccifer as a front for Russian cyber
operations.
Notably, however, the Russian government has always categorically denied any involvement
in alleged hacking or other interference in the 2016 U.S. election, or elections
thereafter.
William Binney and other independent former U.S. intelligence experts say they can prove
the Russiagate narrative is bogus. The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data
released by Guccifer. The analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous
data could not have been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. These
independent experts conclude that the data from the Democrat party could not have been
hacked, as Guccifer and Russiagaters claim. It could only have been obtained by a leak from
inside the party, perhaps by a disgruntled staffer who downloaded the information on to a
disc. That is the only feasible way such a huge amount of data could have been released. That
means the "Russian hacker" claims are baseless.
Wikileaks, whose founder Julian Assange is currently imprisoned in Britain pending an
extradition trial to the U.S. to face espionage charges, has consistently maintained
that their source of files was not a hacker, nor did they collude with Russian intelligence.
As a matter of principle, Wikileaks does not disclose the identity of its sources, but the
organization has indicated it was an insider leak which provided the information on senior
Democrat party corruption.
William Binney says forensic analysis of the files released by Guccifer shows that the
mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression
that the files came from Russian sources. It is known from information later disclosed by
former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the CIA has a secretive program – Vault 7
– which is dedicated to false incrimination of cyber attacks to other actors. It seems
that the purpose of Guccifer was to create the perception of a connection between Wikileaks
and Russian intelligence in order to beef up the Russiagate narrative.
"So that suggested [to] us all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator
[of] Guccifer 2.0. And that Guccifer 2.0 was inside CIA I'm pointing to that group as the
group that was probably the originator of Guccifer 2.0 and also this fabrication of the
entire story of Russiagate," concludes Binney in his interview with Sputnik news
outlet.
This is not the first time that the Russiagate yarn has been debunked . But it is crucially important to make Binney's expert
views more widely appreciated especially as the U.S. presidential election looms on November
3. As that date approaches, U.S. intelligence and media seem to be intensifying claims about
Russian interference and cyber operations. Such wild and unsubstantiated "reports" always
refer to the alleged 2016 "hack" of the Democrat party by "Guccifer 2.0" as if it were
indisputable evidence of Russian interference and the "original sin" of supposed Kremlin
malign activity. The unsubstantiated 2016 "hack" is continually cited as the "precedent" and
"provenance" of more recent "reports" that purport to claim Russian interference.
Given the torrent of Russiagate derivatives expected in this U.S. election cycle, which is
damaging U.S.-Russia bilateral relations and recklessly winding up geopolitical tensions, it
is thus of paramount importance to listen to the conclusions of honorable experts like
William Binney.
The American public are being played by their own intelligence agencies and corporate
media with covert agendas that are deeply anti-democratic.
Well - who set up them up, converted from the OSS? The banksters.
"Wild Bill" Donovan worked for JP Morgan immediately after WWII.
"our" US intelligence agencies were set up by, and serve, the masters of high finance.
Is this in dispute?
meditate_vigorously , 11 hours ago
They have seeded enough misinformation that apparently it is. But, you are correct. It
is the Banksters.
Isisraelquaeda , 2 hours ago
Israel. The CIA was infiltrated by the Mossad long ago.
SurfingUSA , 15 hours ago
JFK was on to that truth, and would have been wise to mini-nuke Langley before his
ill-fated journey to Dallas.
Andrew G , 11 hours ago
Except when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as
Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
vova.2018 , 7 hours ago
Except when there's something exceptionally evil (like pedo/blackmail rings such as
Epstein), in which case it's Mossad / Aman
The CIA & MOSSAD work hand in hand in all their clandestine operations. There is not
doubt the CIA/MOSSAD are behind the creation, evolution, training, supplying weapons,
logistic-planning & financing of the terrorists & the destruction of the Middle
East. Anybody that believes the contrary has brain problems & need to have his head
examined.
CIA/MOSAD has been running illegal activities in Colombia: drug, arms, organs &
human (child-sex) trafficking. CIA/MOSAD is also giving training, logistic & arms to
Colombia paramilitary for clandestine operation against Venezuela. After Bolsonaro became
president, MOSSAD started running similar operation in Brazil. Israel & Brazil also
recognizes Guaido as the legit president of Venezuela.
CIA/MOSSAD have a long time policy of
assassinating & taking out pep who are a problem to the revisionist-zionist agenda, not
just in the M-East but in the world. The CIA/MOSSAD organizations have many connections in
other countries like the M-East, Saudi Arabia, UAE, et al but also to the UK-MI5.
The Israelis infiltrated the US to the highest levels a long time ago - Proof
Israel has & collects information (a database) of US citizens in coordination
with the CIA & the 5 eyes.
Israel works with the NSA in the liaison-loophole operations
Mossad undercover operations in WDC & all over the world
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC
People with 2 citizenships (US/Israel) in WDC/NYC (the real Power)
From Steve Bannon a christian-zionist: Collusion between the Trump administration and
Israel .
Funny how a number of the right wing conspiracy stories according to the MSM from a
couple years back were true from the get go. 1 indictment over 4 years in the greatest
attempted coup in this country's history. So sad that Binney and Assange were never
listened to. They can try to silence us who know of the truth, but as Winston Churchill
once said, 'Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice
may distort it. But there it is.' KDP still censors my book on their advertising platform
as it
promotes conspiratorial theories (about the Obama led coup) and calls out BLM and Antifa
for what they are (marxists) . Yet the same platform still recommends BLM books stating
there is a pandemic of cops killing innocent blacks. F them!!!! #RIPSeth #FreeJulian
#FreeMillie
smacker , 11 hours ago
Yes, and we all know the name of the DNC leaker who downloaded and provided
WikiLeaks
with evidence of CIA and DNC corruption.
He was assassinated to prevent him from naming who Guccifer 2.0 was and where he is
located.
The Russia-gate farce itself provides solid evidence that the CIA and others are in bed
with DNC
and went to extraordinary lengths to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed, they
instigated
a program of x-gates to get him out of office any way they could. This continues to this
day.
This is treason at the highest level.
ACMeCorporations , 12 hours ago
Hacking? What Russian hacking?
In recently released testimony, the CEO of CrowdStrike admitted in congressional
testimony, under oath, that it actually has no direct evidence Russia stole the DNC
emails.
Nelbev , 9 hours ago
"The proof relies on their forensic analysis of the data released by Guccifer. The
analysis of timestamps demonstrates that the download of voluminous data could not have
been physically possible based on known standard internet speeds. ... a disgruntled
staffer who downloaded the information on to a disc. That is the only feasible way such a
huge amount of data could have been released. ... William Binney says forensic analysis
of the files released by Guccifer shows that the mystery hacker deliberately inserted
digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from Russian
sources. ... "
Any computer file is a bunch of 1s and 0s. Anyone can change anything with a hex editor.
E.g. I had wrong dates on some photographs once, downloaded as opposed to when taken, just
edited the time stamp. You cannot claim any time stamp is original. If true time stamps,
then the DNC files were downloaded to a thumb drive at a computer on location and not to
the internet via a phone line. However anyone can change the time stamps. Stating a
"mystery hacker deliberately inserted digital [Russian] 'fingerprints' " is a joke if
denying the file time stamps were not tampered with. The real thing is where the narrative
came from, political spin doctors, Perkins Coie law firm hired by DNC and Hillary campaign
who hired Crowdstrike [and also hired Fusion GPS before for pissgate dossier propaganda and
FISC warrants to spy on political opponents] and Perkins Coie edited Crowdstrike report
with Russian narrative. FBI never looked at DNC servers. This is like your house was broken
into. You deny police the ability to enter and look at evidence like DNC computers. You
hire a private investigator to say your neighbor you do not like did it and publicise
accusations. Take word of political consultants hired, spin doctor propaganda, Crowdstrike
narrative , no police investigation. Atlantic Council?
Vivekwhu , 8 hours ago
The Atlantic Council is another NATO fart. Nuff said!
The_American , 15 hours ago
God Damn traitor Obama!
Yen Cross , 14 hours ago
TOTUS
For the youngsters.
Teleprompter Of The United States.
Leguran , 6 hours ago
The CIA has gotten away with so much criminal behavior and crimes against the American
public that this is totally believable. Congress just lets this stuff happen and does
nothing. Which is worse - Congress or the CIA?
Congress set up the system. It is mandated to perform oversight. And it just sits on its
thumbs and wallows in it privileges.
This time Congress went further than ever before. It was behind and engaged in an
attempted coup d'état.
Know thy enemy , 10 hours ago
Link to ShadowGate (ShadowNet) documentary - which answers the question, what is the
keystone,,,,,
It's time for Assange and Wikileaks to name the person who they rec'd the info from. By
hiding behind the "we don't name names" Mantra they are helping destroy America by
polarizing its citizens. Name the damn person, get it all out there so the left can see
that they've been played by their leaders. Let's cut this crap.
freedommusic , 7 hours ago
...all the evidence was pointing back to CIA as the originator [of] Guccifer 2.0.
Yep, I knew since day one. I remember seeing Hillary Clinton talking about Guccifer . As
soon as uttered the name, I KNEW she with the CIA were the brainchild of this bogus
decoy.
They copy. They mimic. These are NOT creative individuals.
Perhaps hell is too good a place for them.
on target , 4 hours ago
This is old news but worth bringing up again. The CIA never wanted Trump in, and of
course, they want him out. Their fingerprints were all over Russiagate, The Kavanaugh
hearings, Ukrainegate, and on and on. They are just trying to cover their asses for a
string of illegal "irregularities" in their operations for years. Trump should never have
tried to be a get along type of guy. He should have purged the entire leadership of the CIA
on day one and the FBI on day 2. They can not be trusted with an "America First" agenda.
They are all New World Order types who know whats best for everyone.
fersur , 7 hours ago
Boom, Boom, Boom !
Three Reseachable Tweets thru Facebook, I cut all at once, Unedited !
"#SusanRice has as much trouble with her memory as #HillaryClinton. Rice testified in
writing that she 'does not recall' who gave her key #Benghazi talking points she used on
TV, 'does not recall' being in any meetings regarding Benghazi in five days following the
attack, and 'does not recall' communicating with anyone in Clinton's office about
Benghazi," Tom Fitton in Breitbart.
"Adam Schiff secretly subpoenaed, without court authorization, the phone records of Rudy
Giuliani and then published the phone records of innocent Americans, including
@realDonaldTrump 's lawyers, a member of Congress, and a journalist," @TomFitton .
BREAKING: Judicial Watch announced today that former #Obama National Security Advisor
and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, admitted in written responses given
under oath that she emailed with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Clinton's
non-government email account and that she received emails related to government business on
her own personal email account.
STONEHILLADY , 7 hours ago
It's not just the Democrats, the warmongering neocons of the Republican party are also
in on it, the Bush/Romney McCain/McConnell/Cheney and many more. It's called "Kick Backs"
Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up working for all these spying
companies that span the 5eyes to Israel. It seems our POTUS has got his hands full swimming
up stream to get this stopped and actually get rid of the CIA. It's the number 1 reason he
doesn't trust these people, they all try to tell him stuff that is mis-directed.
Liars, leakers, and thieves are running not only our nation but the world, as George
Carlin said, "It's a Big Club, and we ain't in it." If you fall for this false narrative of
mail in voting and not actually go and vote on election day, you better start learning
Chinese for surely Peelosi and Schumer will have their way and mess up this election so
they can drag Trump out of office and possible do him and his family some serious harm, all
because so many of you listen to the MSM and don't research their phony claims.
Max21c , 7 hours ago
It's called "Kick Backs" Ever notice these so called retired Generals all end up
working for all these spying companies that span the 5eyes to Israel.
American Generals & Admirals are a lot more corrupt today than they were a few
generations back. Many of them are outright evil people in today's times. Many of these
people are just criminals that will steal anything they can get their banana republic
klepto-paws on. They're nothing but common criminals and thieves. No different than the
Waffen SS or any other group of brigands, bandits, and criminal gangsters.
Max21c , 7 hours ago
The CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, Pentagon Gestapo, defense contractors are
mixed up in a lot of crimes and criminal activities on American soil against American
citizens and American civilians. They do not recognize borders or laws or rights of liberty
or property rights or ownership or intellectual property. They're all thieves and criminals
in the military secret police and secret police gangsters cabal.
BandGap , 7 hours ago
I have seen Binney's input. He is correct in my view because he
scientifically/mathematically proves his point.
The blinded masses do not care about this approach, just like wearing masks.
The truth is too difficult for many to fit into their understanding of the world.
So they repeat what they have been told, never stopping to consider the facts or how
circumstances have been manipulated.
It is frustrating to watch, difficult to navigate at times for me. Good people who will
not stop and think of what the facts show them.
otschelnik , 8 hours ago
It could have been the CIA or it could have been one of the cut-outs for plausible
deniability, and of all the usual suspects it was probably CrowdStrike.
- CGI / Global Strategy Group / Analysis Corp. - John Brennan (former CEO)
- Dynology, Wikistrat - General James L. Jones (former chairman of Atlantic Council, NSA
under Obama)
- CrowdStrike - Dmitri Alperovich and Shawn Henry (former chief of cyber forensics
FBI)
- Clearforce - Michael Hayden (former dir. NSA under Clinton, CIA under Bush) and Jim
Jones Jr. (son Gnrl James Jones)
- McChrystal Group - Stanley McChrystal (former chief of special operations DOD)
fersur , 8 hours ago
Unedited !
The Brookings Institute – a Deep State Hub Connected to the Fake Russia Collusion
and Ukraine Scandals Is Now Also Connected to China Spying In the US
The Brookings
Institute was heavily involved in the Democrat and Deep State Russia collusion hoax and
Ukraine impeachment fraud. These actions against President Trump were criminal.
This institute is influenced from foreign donations from entities who don't have an
America first agenda. New reports connect the Institute to Chinese spying.
As we reported previously, Julie Kelly at American Greatness
released a report where she addresses the connections between the Brookings Institute,
Democrats and foreign entities. She summarized her report as follows: Accepting millions
from a state sponsor of terrorism, foisting one of the biggest frauds in history on the
American people, and acting as a laundering agent of sorts for Democratic political
contributions disguised as policy grants isn't a good look for such an esteemed
institution. One would be hard-pressed to name a more influential think tank than the
Brookings Institution. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit routinely ranks at the top of
the list
of the best think tanks in the world; Brookings scholars produce a steady flow of reports,
symposiums, and news releases that sway the conversation on any number of issues ranging
from domestic and economic policy to foreign affairs.
Brookings is home to lots of Beltway power players: Ben
Bernanke and Janet Yellen, former chairmen of the Federal Reserve, are Brookings fellows.
Top officials from both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations lend political
heft to the organization. From 2002 until 2017, the organization's president was Strobe
Talbott. He's a longtime BFF of Bill Clinton; they met in the 1970s at Oxford University
and have been tight ever since. Talbott was a top aide to both President Bill Clinton and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Kelly continued:
Brookings-based fellows working at Lawfare were the media's go-to legal "experts" to
legitimize the concocted crime; the outlet manipulated much of the news coverage on
collusion by pumping out primers and guidance on how to report collusion events from
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's appointment to his final report.
Now, testimony related to a defamation lawsuit against Christopher Steele, the author of
the infamous "dossier" on Donald Trump, has exposed his direct ties to Talbott in 2016 when
he was still head of Brookings. Talbott and Steele were in communication before and after
the presidential election; Steele wanted Talbott to circulate the dossier to his pals in
John Kerry's State Department, which reportedly is what Talbott
did . Steele also briefed top state department officials in October 2016 about his
work.
But this isn't the only connection between the Brookings Institute and the Russia
collusion and Ukrainian scandals. We were the first to report that the Primary Sub-Source
(PSS) in the Steele report, the main individual who supplied Steele with bogus information
in his report was Igor Danchenko.
In November 2019, the star witness for the Democrat Representative Adam Schiff's
impeachment show trial was announced. Her name was Fiona Hill.
Today we've uncovered that Hill is a close associate of the Primary Sub-Source (PSS) for
the Steele dossier – Igor Danchenko – the individual behind most all the lies
in the Steele dossier. No wonder Hill saw the Steele dossier before it was released. Her
associate created it.
Both Fiona Hill and Igor Danchenko are connected to the Brookings Institute.
They gave a presentation together as Brookings Institute representatives:
Kelly writes about the foreign funding the Brookings Institute partakes:
So who and what have been funding the anti-Trump political operation at Brookings over
the past few years? The think tank's top benefactors are a predictable mix of family
foundations, Fortune 100 corporations, and Big Tech billionaires. But one of the biggest
contributors to Brookings' $100 million-plus annual budget is the Embassy of Qatar.
According to financial reports, Qatar has donated more than $22 million to the think tank
since 2004. In fact, Brookings operates a satellite center in Doha, the
capital of Qatar. The wealthy Middle Eastern oil producer
spends billions on American institutions such as universities and other think
tanks.
Qatar also is a top state sponsor of terrorism, pouring billions into Hamas, al-Qaeda,
and the Muslim Brotherhood, to name a few. "The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has
historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level," President Trump said in 2017. "We
have to stop the funding of terrorism."
An email from a Qatari official, obtained by WikiLeaks, said the Brookings
Institution was as important to the country as "an aircraft carrier."
The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a
Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China's intelligence and
spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents.
The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank's hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of
understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the
institution said . The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal
government that has raised flags within the FBI.
The partnership raises questions about potential Chinese espionage activities at the
think tank, which employs numerous former government officials and nearly two dozen
current foreign policy advisers to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
It is really frightening that one of two major political parties in the US is tied so
closely with the Brookings Institute. It is even more frightening that foreign enemies of
the United States are connected to this entity as well.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
One thing for sure is these guys have far to much of our money to spend promoting their
own good.
fersur , 7 hours ago
Unedited !
Mueller Indictments Tied To "ShadowNet," Former Obama National Security Advisor and
Obama's CIA Director – Not Trump
According to a report in the Daily Beast, which cited the Wall Street Journal's
reporting of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into two companies, Wikistrat
and Psy Group, "The firm's advisory council lists former CIA and National Security Agency
director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser James L. Jones."
According to numerous reporting from major news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and
Daily Beast, both Wikistrat and Psy Group represent themselves as being social media
analysts and black PSYOP organizations. Both Wikistrat and Psy Group have foreign ownership
mixed between Israeli, Saudi (Middle East) and Russian. Here is what the Wall Street
Journal, The Daily Beast and pretty much everyone else out there doesn't know (or won't
tell you).
The fact Obama's former National Security Advisor, General James Jones, and former Obama
CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, are both on Wikistrat's advisory board may not seem
suspicious, but both of these general's have another thing in common, and that is the
ShadowNet. The ShadowNet, and its optional companion relational database, iPsy, were both
originally developed by the small, family owned defense contracting company, Dynology. The
family that owns Dynology; Gen. James Jones. I would add Paul Manafort and Rick Davis was
Dynology's partner at the time we were making the ShadowNet and iPsy commercially
available.
After obtaining the contract in Iraq to develop social media psychological warfare
capabilities, known in military nomenclature as Interactive Internet Activities, or IIA,
Gen. Jones kept the taxpayer funded application we developed in Iraq for the 4th
Psychological Operation Group, and made it commercially available under the trademark of
the "ShadowNet" and the optional black PSYOP component, "iPsy." If you think it is
interesting that one of the companies under Mueller's indictment is named, "Psy" Group, I
did as well. In fact, literally everything both publicly described in news reports, and
even their websites, are exactly the same as the ShadowNet and iPsy I helped build, and
literally named.
The only thing different I saw as far as services offered by Wikistrat, and that of
Dynology and the ShadowNet, was described by The Daily Beast as, "It also engaged in
intelligence collection." Although iPsy was a relational database that allowed for the
dissemination of whatever the required narrative was, "intelligence collection" struck
another bell with me, and that's a company named ClearForce.
ClearForce was developed as a solution to stopping classified leaks following the Edward
Snowden debacle in 2013. Changes in NISPOM compliance requirements forced companies and
government agencies that had employees with government clearances to take preventive
measure to mitigate the potential of leaking. Although the NISPOM compliance requirement
almost certainly would have been influenced by either Hayden, Jones or both, they once
again sought to profit from it.
Using components of the ShadowNet and iPsy, the ClearForce application (which the
company, ClearForce, was named after,) was developed to provide compliance to a regulation
I strongly suspect you will find Jones and Hayden had a hand in creating. In fact, I
strongly suspect you will find General Jones had some influence in the original requirement
for our Iraq contract Dynology won to build the ShadowNet – at taxpayer expense!
Dynology worked for several years incorporating other collection sources, such as
financial, law enforcement and foreign travel, and ties them all into your social media
activity. Their relationship with Facebook and other social media giants would have been
nice questions for congress to have asked them when they testified.
Part 1 of 2 !
fersur , 7 hours ago
Part 2 of 2 !
The ClearForce application combines all of these sources together in real-time and uses
artificial intelligence to predictively determine if you are likely to steal or leak based
on the behavioral profile ClearForce creates of you. It can be used to determine if you get
a job, and even if you lose a job because a computer read your social media, credit and
other sources to determine you were likely to commit a crime. It's important for you to
stop for a moment and think about the fact it is privately controlled by the former CIA
director and Obama's National Security Advisor/NATO Supreme Allied Commander, should scare
the heck out of you.
When the ClearForce application was complete, Dynology handed it off to ClearForce, the
new company, and Michael Hayden joined the board of directors along with Gen. Jones and his
son, Jim, as the president of ClearForce. Doesn't that kind of sound like "intelligence
collection" described by the Daily Beast in Wikistrat's services?
To wrap this all up, Paul Manafort, Rick Davis, George Nader, Wikistrat and Psy Group
are all directly connected to Mueller's social media influence and election interreference
in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, I believe all are under indictment, computers
seized, some already sentenced. All of these people under indictment by Mueller have one
key thing in common, General James Jones's and Michael Hayden's social media black PSYOP
tools; the ShadowNet, iPsy and ClearForce.
A recent meeting I had with Congressman Gus Bilirakis' chief of staff, Elizabeth Hittos,
is confirmation that they are reviewing my DoD memorandum stating the work I did on the IIA
information operation in Iraq, the Dynology marketing slicks for the ShadowNet and iPsy,
along with a screenshot of Goggle's Way-Back Machine showing Paul Manafort's partnership
with Dynology in 2007 and later. After presenting to her these facts and making clear I
have much more information that requires the highest classification SCIF to discuss and
requires being read-on to the program, Elizabeth contacted the office of Congressman Devin
Nunez to request that I brief the intelligence committee on this critical information
pertaining directly to the 2010 Ukrainian elections, Michael Brown riots, 2016 election
interference and the "Russia collusion" hoax. All of that is on top of numerous
questionable ethical and potentially illegal profits from DoD contracts while servings as
NATO Commander and Obama's National Security Advisor.
We also need to know if the ShadowNet and iPsy were allowed to fall into foreign hands,
including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel. I'm pretty sure South America is going to have a
few questions for Jones and Obama as well? Stay tuned!
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours ago
Intelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially
'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and
will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will
always be the Americans themselves.
Balance-Sheet , 4 hours ago
Intelligence Agencies of all countries endlessly wage war at all times especially
'Information Warfare' (propaganda/disinformation) and the primary target has always and
will always be the domestic population of the Intelligence Agency's country.
Yes, of course the CIA does target ALL other countries but the primary target will
always be the Americans themselves.
The neoliberals own the media, courts, academia, and BUREAUCRACY (including CIA) and
they will do anything to make sure they retain power over everyone. These control freaks
work hard to create all sorts of enemies to justify their existence.
LaugherNYC , 15 hours ago
It is sad that this information has to be repeatedly published, over and over and over,
by SCI and other Russian. outlets.
Because no legit AMERICAN news outlet will give Binney or Assange the time of day or any
credence, this all becomes Kremlin-sponsored disinformation and denials. People roll their
eyes and say "Oh God, not the whole 'Seth Rich was murdered by the CIA' crap again!! You
know, his FAMILY has asked that people stop spreading these conspiracy theories and
lies."
SCI is a garbage bin, nothing more than a dizinformatz machine for Putin, but in this
case, they are likely right. It seems preposterous that the "best hackers in the world"
would forget to use a VPN or leave a signature behind, and it makes far more sense that the
emails were leaked by someone irate at the abuses of the DNC - the squashing of Bernie, the
cheating for Hillary in the debates - behavior we saw repeated in 2020 with Bernie shoved
aside again for the pathetic Biden.
Would that SOMEONE in the US who is not on the Kremlin payroll would pick up this
thread. But all the "investigative journalists" now work indirectly for the DNC, and those
that don't are cancelled by the left.
Stone_d_agehurler , 15 hours ago
I am Guccifer and I approve this message.
Sarc/
But i do share your opinion. They are likely right this time and most of the pundits and
media in the U. S. know it. That's what makes this a sad story about how rotten the U. S.
system has become.
Democrats will sacrifice the Union for getting Trump out of office.
If elections in Nov won't go their way, Civil War II might become a real thing in
2021.
PeterLong , 4 hours ago
If " digital "fingerprints" in order to give the impression that the files came from
Russian sources" were inserted in the leak by "Guccifer", and if the leak to wikileaks came
from Seth Rich, via whatever avenue, then the "Guccifer" release came after the wikileaks
release, or after wikileaks had the files, and was a reaction to same attempting to
diminish their importance/accuracy and cast doubt on Trump. Could CIA and/or DNC have known
the files were obtained by wikileaks before wikileaks actually released them? In any case
collusion of CIA with DNC seems to be a given.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours ago
Because Seth had already given it to Wikileaks. There is no 'Fancy Bear'. There is no
'Cozy Bear'. Those were made up by CrowdStrike, and they tried the same crap on Ukraine,
and Ukraine told them to pound sand. When push came to shove, and CrowdStrike was forced to
say what they really had under oath, they said: "We have nothing."
novictim , 4 hours ago
You are leaving out Crowd Strike. Seth Rich was tasked by people at the DNC to copy data
off the servers. He made a backup copy and gave a copy to people who then got it to Wiki
leaks. He used highspeed file transfers to local drives to do his task.
Meanwhile, it was the Ukrainian company Crowd Strike that claimed the data was stolen
over the internet and that the thieves were in Russia. That 'proof" was never verified by
US Intelligence but was taken on its word as being true despite crowd strike falsifying
Russian hacks and being caught for it in the past.
Joebloinvestor , 5 hours ago
The "five eyes" are convinced they run the world and try to.
That is what Brennan counted on for these agencies to help get President Trump.
As I said, it is time for the UK and the US to have a serious conversation about their
current and ex-spies being involved in US elections.
Southern_Boy , 5 hours ago
It wasn't the CIA. It was John Brennan and Clapper. The CIA, NSA FBI, DOJ and the
Ukrainian Intelligence Service just went along working together and followed orders from
Brennan who got them from Hillary and Obama.
Oh, and don't forget the GOP Globalist RINOs who also participated in the coup attempt:
McCain, Romney, Kasich, Boehner, Lee and Richard Burr.
With Kasich now performing as a puppy dog for Biden at the Democrat Convention as a
Democrat DNC executive, the re-alignment is almost complete: Globalist Nationalist
Socialist Bolshevism versus American Populism, i.e. Elites versus Deplorables or Academics
versus Smelly Wal-Mart people.
on target , 5 hours ago
No way. CIA up to their eyeballs in this as well as the State Department. Impossible for
Russiagate or Ukrainegate without direct CIA and State involvement.
RightlyIndignent , 4 hours ago
Following Orders? How did that argument go at Nuremberg? (hint: not very well)
LeadPipeDreams , 6 hours ago
LOL - the CIA's main mission - despite their "official" charter, has always been to
destabilize the US and its citizens via psyops, false flags, etc.
Covid-1984 is their latest and it appears most successful project yet.
Iconoclast27 , 5 hours ago
The CIA received a $200 million initial investment from the Rockefeller and Carnegie
foundations when it was first established, that should tell you everything you need to know
how who they truly work for.
A_Huxley , 6 hours ago
CIA, MI6, 5 eye nations.
All wanted to sway the USA their own way.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
Almost as frightening as the concentrated power held by companies such as Facebook and
Google is the fact Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and the world's richest man, is the person who
owns and controls the Washington Post. It is silly to think Jeff Bezos purchased the
Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence.
It is more likely he purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would
ensure him in Washington when wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to extend his ability to
both shape and control public opinion. More on this subject in the article below.
How it is the Democrats, the Deep State, and the legacy media are still able to cling to
the remnants of these long discredited narratives is a mystery.
avoiceofliberty , 6 hours ago
At the official level, you have a point.
However, even before Mueller was appointed, a review of the materials in the extant
public record of both the DNC "hack" and the history of Crowdstrike showed the narrative
simply did not make sense. A detailed investigation of materials not made public was not
necessary to shoot down the entire narrative.
Indeed, one of the great scandals of the Mueller probe is the way it did not bring
prudential skepticism to the question of the DNC "hack". When building a case, either for
public debate or for public trial, a dose of skepticism is healthy; it leads to a careful
vetting of facts and reasoning.
Alice-the-dog , 6 hours ago
The CIA has been an agency wholly independent of the US government almost since its
inception. It is not under any significant control by the government, and has its own
agenda which may occasionally coincide with that of the government, but only
coincidentally. It has its own view of how the world should look, and will not balk at any
means necessary to achieve such. Including the murder of dis-favorable members of
government.
snodgrass , 6 hours ago
It's the CIA and the FBI, Obama and people in his administration who cooked up
Russiagate.
Floki_Ragnarsson , 7 hours ago
The CIA whacked JFK because he was going to slow the roll to Vietnam AND disband the CIA
and reform it.
It is broken and needs to be disbanded and reformed along lines that actually WORK! The
CIA missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11, etc. HTF does THAT happen?
DeportThemAll , 6 hours ago
The CIA didn't "miss" 9/11... they participated in it.
Let it Go , 8 hours ago
The CIA is a tool that when improperly used can do great damage.
Anyone who doesn't believe that countries use psychological warfare and propaganda to
sway the opinions of people both in and outside of their country should be considered
naive. Too many people America is more than a little hypocritical when they criticize other
countries for trying to gain influence considering our history of meddling in the affairs
of other countries.
Americans have every reason to be concerned and worried considering revelations of just
how big the government intelligence agencies have grown since 9-11 and how unlimited their
spying and surveillance operations have become. The article below explores this growth and
questions whether we have lost control.
The idea of Binney and Jason Sullivan privately working to 'secure the vote' is
something that I actually consider to be very eyebrow raising and alarming.
Son of Captain Nemo , 8 hours ago
Bill Binney under "B" in the only "yellow pages" that show a conscience and a
soul!...
This is the dumbest article ever. Russiagate is a total fabrication of the FBI as per
Clinesmith, CIA provided information that would have nipped it at the bud. Read the real
news.
bringonthebigone , 9 hours ago
Wrong. this article is one small piece of the puzzle. Clinesmith is one small piece of
the puzzle. The Flynn entrapment is one small piece of the puzzle. The Halper entrapment
was one small piece of the puzzle.
Because Clinesmith at the FBI covered up the information saying Page was a CIA source
does not mean it was a total FBI fabrication and does not mean the CIA was not involved and
does not mean the DNC server hack is irrelevant.
Sundance does a better job pulling it all together.
PKKA , 14 hours ago
Relations have already soured between Russia and the United States, and sanctions have
been announced. Tensions have grown on the NATO-Russia border. The meat has already been
rolled into the minced meat and it will not be possible to roll the minced meat back into
the meat. The CIA got it. But the Russian people now absolutely understand that the United
States will always be the enemy of Russia, no matter whether socialist or capitalist. But I
like it even more than the feigned hypocritical "friendship". Russia has never reached such
heights as during the good old Cold War. All Russians have a huge incentive, long live the
new Cold War!
smacker , 12 hours ago
More and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and
Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to
world peace.
It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the
Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over
Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.
Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never
accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will
be.
smacker , 12 hours ago
More and more people have worked out that the fabricated tensions between the US and
Russia
and US and China have little to do with those two countries posing any sort of threat to
world peace.
It is all about the US trying to remain in No.1 position as uni-polar top dog via the
Anglo American Empire.
We see examples of this every day in the M/E, South China Sea, Taiwan, Libya all over
Eastern Europe,
Ukraine, Iran and now Belaruse. HK was added along the way.
Both Russia and China openly want a multi-polar world order. But the US will never
accept that.
Hence the prospect of war. The only unknown today is what and where the trigger will
be.
hang_the_banksters , 31 minutes ago
the best proof thAt Guccifer 2 was CIA hacking themselves to frame Wikileaks is
this:
Guccifer has not yet been identified, indicted and arrested.
you'd think CIAFBINSA would be turning over every stone to the ends of the earth to bust
Guccifer. we just had to endure 4 years of hysterical propaganda that Russia had hacked our
election and that Trump was their secret agent. so Guccifer should be the Most Wanted Man
on the planet. meanwhile, it's crickets from FBI. they arent even looking for him. because
Guccifer is over at Langley. maybe someone outta ask Brennan where G2 is now.
remember when DOJ indicted all those GRU cybersoldiers? the evidence listed in the
indictment was so stunning that i dont believe it. NSA so thoroughly hacked back into GRU
that NSA was watching GRU through their own webcams and recording them doing Google
searches to translate words which were written in Guccifer's blog posts about the DNC email
leaks. NSA and DOJ must think we are all stupid, that we will believe NSA is so powerful to
do that, yet they cant identify Guccifer.
i say i dont believe that for a second because no way Russian GRU are so stupid to even
have webcams on the computers they use to hack, and it is absurd to think GRU soldiers on a
Russian military base would be using Google instead of Yandex to translate words into
English.
lay_arrow
ConanTheContrarian1 , 1 hour ago
As a confirmed conspiracy theorist since I came back from 'Nam, here's mine: The
European nobility recognized with the American and French revolutions that they needed a
better approach. They borrowed from the Tudors (who had to deal with Parliament) and began
to rule by controlling the facade of representative government. This was enhanced by
funding banks to control through currency, as well as blackmail and murder, and morphed
into a complete propaganda machine like no other in history. The CIA, MI6 and Mossad, the
mainstream media, deep plants in bureaucracy and "democratic" bodies all obey their
dictates to create narratives that control our minds. Trump seems to offer hope, but
remember, he could be their latest narrative.
greatdisconformity , 1 hour ago
A Democracy cannot function on a higher level than the general electorate.
The intelligence and education of the general electorate has been sliding for
generations, because both political parties can play this to their advantage.
It is no accident that most of the messages coming from politicians are targeted to
imbeciles.
From the document: "Binney is quoted as being convinced by Campbell's analysis and now
believes the DNC data was hacked."
This person gets it wrong. What Binney concluded was that the data was *manipulated" and
therefore can not be used to establish much of anything. However, the point that the data
could not be transmitted at the speed estimated in 2016 is still basically valid and that the
data was loaded onto removable storage is also still likely. *However*, that fact has always
been mostly irrelevant, since no one knows how many times it was moved and by what means.
Almost certainly it was moved by an external storage device at some point before ending up in
Wikileaks. Craig Murray pretty much said as much.
How I would have done it is sit outside the DNC server location with a decent high-speed
WiFi connection to their wireless network (I presume they have one, everyone does these
days), and after doing whatever was necessary, either as an employee or a spy, to connect to
the network, I would have downloaded the data to my wireless device (laptop, presumably). The
NSA would be oblivious to this transfer, although depending on my anti-forensics skill, it
might still have been detected internally by a computer forensics expert. CrowdStrike never
found the actual leaker or the exfiltration method AFAIK; all they found was some malware -
which means whoever took it was either authorized to do so (or used the credentials of
someone else authorized to do so - standard operating procedure for either external or
internal spies) or was very good at anti-forensics. Or CrowdStrike was simply incompetent. Or
all three.
What the data analysis *does* do is disprove the US allegation that Russians extracted the
data *over the Internet* *directly* to Wikileaks. Nothing in the Mueller report suggests the
data was moved by external storage media. Binney's statement that if it was moved over the
Internet, the NSA would know it and could prove it remains true. That they never have is one
huge red flag about the Mueller claims.
The rest of the conspiracy analysis in the linked document is only minimally interesting.
The 5G stuff just shows the writer to be a non-scientist, as they fully admit, while still
suggesting that 5G is some sort of health threat. I wouldn't be surprised if it is to some
degree. The problem is that no one outside the non-ionizing radiation scientific community
has any real clue to *what* degree. If the international organizations have concluded it is
not, it takes, as they say, "extraordinary evidence" to prove them wrong. None of that has
been forthcoming, in particular nothing by Snake here. So it's a waste of time to take it
seriously. I've asked Snake for *one* single experiment done by *anyone* with real
credentials that uses the actual level of radiation from either a 5G phone or a tower to
cause subjects to get the virus. AFAIK there is no such experiment done anywhere by anyone.
So there is no evidence it happens - or for that matter, no evidence it doesn't except
current recognized science. Which, as I say, has been dismissed by the real experts.
Everything else is speculation - and conspiracy theory.
In general, I like conspiracy theories. They provide a fertile field for investigation -
if someone has the means to do so. Most conspiracy theorists don't have the means. They just
regurgitate the available reports - which, by definition, are unreliable - and engage in
"analysis", which really means speculation. Only on the ground investigation can begin to get
at the truth.
Back in 1968 or 1969, I forget which, I actually went to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to
talk to people about the legendary "Mothman" that journalist John Keel had written about. I
talked to the cops involved, a stringer reporter who had accompanied Keel in his
investigations, and some of the UFO witnesses in the area. I couldn't establish what actually
happened from this, but it *did* confirm what Keel had written was what he was told.
Keel was an "old-school" journalist who believed in "ground truth". The problem with most
conspiracy theorists is that most of them don't have either the technical expertise or the
resources to get "ground truth". Keel himself told me once that he would go to a location, do
some investigation, deliver a talk of some sort, and write off his expenses as tax
write-offs, which he said the IRS was not happy about. And he was by no means rich, his books
never sold that much. Without a significant income, it's next to impossible to determine the
truth of 99% of the events in any given conspiracy theory.
Or for that matter, the truth in 99% of the main stream news. But it's not 100%. The other
problem conspiracy theorists have - and we see it here daily - is that just because a report
comes from the MSM, it *has* to be false in its *entirety*. Which is ridiculous. Most of the
MSM news is valid reporting. It's just how much is left out and how the spin is applied from
the wording or who the source was that is the problem. A few things might be completely made
up, but most things aren't. But if the reporter hasn't himself done the leg-work to verify
the statements of the sources, then it has to be considered unreliable or at least
incomplete.
Do some research it becomes clear quickly what the real story is. Hillary and her bunch
stink to high heaven and have or YEARS. Started with her and husband. They sold this country
o or personal gain.Just search a little and make sure to use factual information. It is there
for anyone to find.
"... The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop. ..."
"... The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election. ..."
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State
Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence
personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from
the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance
of power in the lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence
background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently
clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq,
who worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top aide to John Negroponte, the
first director of national intelligence. After her deep involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where,
as a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of responsibility included drone
warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare. Elissa Slotkin
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its top candidates, part of the so-called
"Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan,
which includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing
the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of
the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic primary campaigns that,
with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, which includes a vast swathe of the US-Mexico border along the Rio Grande, features
a contest for the Democratic nomination between Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, who subsequently served
as an adviser for US interventions in South Sudan and Libya, and Jay Hulings. The latter's website describes him as a former national
security aide on Capitol Hill and federal prosecutor, whose father and mother were both career undercover CIA agents. The incumbent
Republican congressman, Will Hurd, is himself a former CIA agent, so any voter in that district will have his or her choice of intelligence
agency loyalists in both the Democratic primary and the general election.
CNN's "State of the Union" program on March 4 included a profile of Jones as one of many female candidates seeking nomination
as a Democrat in Tuesday's primary in Texas. The network described her discreetly as a "career civil servant." However, the Jones
for Congress website positively shouts about her role as a spy, noting that after graduating from college, "Gina entered the US Air
Force as an intelligence officer, where she deployed to Iraq and served under the US military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy" (the
last phrase signaling to those interested in such matters that Jones is gay).
According to her campaign biography, Ortiz Jones was subsequently detailed to a position as "senior advisor for trade enforcement,"
a post President Obama created by executive order in 2012. She would later be invited to serve as a director for investment at the
Office of the US Trade Representative, where she led the portfolio that reviewed foreign investments to ensure they did not pose
national security risks. With that background, if she fails to win election, she can surely enlist in the trade war efforts of the
Trump administration.
The first and the most important fact that there will no elections in November -- both candidates represent the same oligarchy,
just slightly different factions of it.
Look like NYT is controlled by Bolton faction of CIA. They really want to overturn the
results of 2020 elections and using Russia as a bogeyman is a perfect opportunity to achieve this
goal.
Neocons understand very well that it is MIC who better their bread, so amplifying rumors the simplify getting additional budget
money for intelligence agencies (which are a part of MIC) is always the most desirable goal.
Notable quotes:
"... But a new assessment says China would prefer to see the president defeated, though it is not clear Beijing is doing much to meddle in the 2020 campaign to help Joseph R. Biden Jr. ..."
"... The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's confidence in our democratic process." ..."
"... But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences", "increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections? ..."
"... But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn? ..."
"... Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any evidence. ..."
"... Is there a secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S. people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China? ..."
"... If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them? ..."
"... Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off their budget. ..."
"... Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose. ..."
But when one reads the piece itself one finds no fact that would support the 'Russia
Continues Interfering' statement:
Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence
officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to
interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.
At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in
November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.
But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more
immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have
not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike
Mr. Trump, the officials said.
The assessment, included in a
statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National
Counterintelligence and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading
carefully, reflecting the political heat generated by previous findings.
The authors emphasize the scaremongering hearsay from "officials briefed on the
intelligence" - i.e. Democratic congress members - about Russia but have nothing to back it
up.
When one reads the
statement by Evanina one finds nothing in it about Russian attempts to interfere in the
U.S. elections. Here is the only 'evidence' that is noted:
For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about
corruption – including through publicizing leaked phone calls – to undermine
former Vice President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party. Some Kremlin-linked actors
are also seeking to boost President Trump's candidacy on social media and Russian television.
After a request from Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal attorney, a Ukrainian
parliamentarian published Ukrainian
evidence of Biden's very real interference in the Ukraine. Also: Some guest of a Russian TV
show had an opinion. How is either of those two items 'evidence' of Russian interference in
U.S. elections?
The statement then claims: "Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt
influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, shift
U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people's
confidence in our democratic process."
But how do the 'intelligence' agencies know that foreign states want to "sway preferences",
"increase discord" or "undermine confidence" in elections?
The mainstream view in the U.S. media and government holds that the Kremlin is waging a
long-haul campaign to undermine and destabilize American democracy. Putin wants to see the
United States burn, and contentious elections offer a ready-made opportunity to fan the
flames.
But ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often
mistaken for true intent. [...] Where is the evidence that Russia actually wants to bring
down the liberal world order and watch the United States burn?
Well there is none. And that is why the 'intelligence' agencies do not present any
evidence.
Even the NYT writers have to
admit that there is nothing there:
The release on Friday was short on specifics, ...
and
Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments, and steer
clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.
How do 'intelligence' agencies know Russian, Chinese or Iranian 'intentions'. Is there a
secret policy paper by the Russian government that says it should "increase discord" in the
United States? Is there some Chinese think tank report which says that undermining U.S.
people's confidence in their democratic process would be good for China?
If the 'intelligence' people have copies of those papers why not publish them?
Let me guess. The 'intelligence' agencies have nothing, zero, nada. They are just making
wild-ass guesses about 'intentions' of perceived enemies to impress the people who sign off
their budget.
Nowadays that seems to be their main purpose.
Posted by b on August 8, 2020 at 18:08 UTC |
Permalink
As America separates into two distinct substances – one nation dissolving into two
– we should perhaps pay more attention to the psychology underlying this segmentation,
and not just to its 'politics'. Clearly, the latter is vital to understanding the U.S.
Furthermore, these two U.S. psychic states of mind are playing out across the Middle East and
beyond – not so much in a strategic way, but as the projection of inner psyche. This
projection seeks to demonstrate its moral validation externally, in a way that cannot be done
internally – for the balance of forces domestically is such that neither party can, as
they would like, force the submission of the 'other' to their worldview; neither can prevail
decisively.
Not even the November election will settle matters in any final way. It might, rather,
sharpen the contest further.
What are the key vectors to this scission? It is firstly, that in the U.S., 'facts' are no
longer tolerated as facts. Facts like ideology, have separated into two irreconcilable camps,
each at each other's throats. And, secondly, any authority or sourcing for what is asserted as
fact, in today's world, has long fled the scene. Today we deal only with one psychic
'emotivism' (in Alasdair Macintyre's formulation), up and over, against, another. Much heat; no
light.
Those who do not agree are called any number of pejorative names, but which essentially are
meant to indicate that the other be a 'barbarian' in the old Roman sense: i.e. someone beneath
relevance; beneath one's attention; a 'babbler' (barbarian's original meaning). And worse:
these people lie, and would stoop to any illegitimate, seditionist (i.e. unconstitutional)
means, to obtain their illicit ends. That is how both parties, broadly, see each other.
Hyper-partisanship.
This is not really new – we knew it already. But what has this to do with the Mid-East
and beyond? Its salience is that, in pursuit of validation for one or other of these psychic
perspectives, one U.S. faction is prepared to force submission to the 'rightness' of America's
founding Christian Messianism – almost oblivious to potential consequence. To this end, a
large part of the Middle East is being threatened with societal and economic collapse.
Clearly, reason or diplomacy will not avail. It will be dismissed as babbling. It is
striking too, that some officials almost rejoice in the pain and starvation they may cause.
Their language unveils the implicit strata of religion to these actions: They speak to 'just
retribution'. If it is America's so-called 'interest' to collapse Hizbullah, Syria's President
Assad or Iran's Revolutionary government, then the American interest too, is that these whole
nations, their peoples, should suffer economic apocalypse. So be it: Merited.
As one American historian, Professor Vlahos,
describes the situation in the U.S.: not only has America separated into two nations, it
has, furthermore, divided into two separate religious sects, at odds with each other, yet both
reflecting polar sides to America's original religious impulse. One, (the party presently in
office), sees national identity rooted in an American, golden, earlier age, upholding property,
commerce and liberty as traditional inherited rights (signifiers of God's Grace, in the
Calvinist, Protestant meme).
The other (more in the apocalyptic vein), "looks to the future. They call themselves
progressives; see the perfection and purity that lies ahead, and looks to the past as a deep
and dark stain – as an imperfect, barbarous, primitive past that needs to be cast off
– and a shining uplifting future needing to be sustained". Both are existential and
conflicting visions,
Professor Vlahos says , "telling us how to live; defining good and evil, there is no place
for compromise between them".
The killing of George Floyd, however, has ignited an uneasy truce into flames. Floyd's
killing has become the iconic symbol – surpassing it specific content – to compare
in the depth and intensity of the cultural animosities on both sides – to the Dreyfus
affair in France between 1897–1899. In The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman writes that
Dreyfus, a Jewish officer suspected of spying for the Germans, never a particularly notable
personality to begin with, became an 'abstraction' to his supporters and detractors. She
summarized:
"Each side fought for an idea, its idea of France: one the France of
Counter-Revolution, the other the France of 1789, one for its last chance to arrest
progressive social tendencies and restore the old values; the other to cleanse the honour of
the Republic, and preserve it from the clutches of reaction".
Will Collins
writes in The American Conservative that "it is hard to think of a more apt comparison to
the current moment. The language of existential conflict was mainstreamed on the American Right
by the 2016 election. A now-infamous essay, "The Flight 93 Election," compared voting for
Donald Trump to a desperate attempt to retake a hijacked plane from the 9/11 terrorists. On the
Left, the incremental liberalism of the Obama administration has given way to something more
radical, a thoroughgoing critique of American institutions and history that suggests –
and sometimes says outright – that revolutionary change is the only path forward".
These two conflicted psychic images are defining not just America's domestic arena, but
global geo-politics, too. Acutely aware of these schisms, Americans are becoming easily
agitated and angered by notions that China or Russia might wedge the void.
Unprecedented recent sanctions on the Syrian and Lebanese peoples (via the Caesar Act)
similarly are the effusion of a stridently-held, yet contested missionary vision. These
comprehensive sanctions are
precisely intended to harm people – even to starve them, or precipitate them into
civil war. That is what they are meant to do – U.S. Envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey,
celebrated the fact that U.S. sanctions against Damascus have "contributed to the collapse"
of the Syrian economy.
And this is the 'good/evil' temper of the moment. For such a dark fate is precisely what
many conservative Americans would like to visit upon those fellow Americans who occupy
Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (or now 'Protest Zone'– i.e. CHAZ).
They would like the electricity, the water and the food cut-off. For this is America's
internal contradiction: These BLM protestors hate America's Golden Age: they regard the latter
as a "dark stain", a barbarous primitive era that must be cast-off. The 'party of the Golden
Age' would love to see the CHAZ occupiers' starved into submission – only they can't. It
would spark internal U.S. turmoil, and a return of, most probably, violent protest.
But for the luckless people of Syria, Lebanon , Iraq and Iran, being sanctioned into
oblivion is no problem. They are 'morally stained' in both U.S. 'visions'. One U.S. party
cannot abide their rejection of America's righteous 'moral' vision; and the other sees these
nations to be residing in such barbarous, primitive and imperfect conditions, that
state-overthrow becomes inevitable, and to be desired. (Most of Europe falls into this latter,
hyper partisan category, too, if couched in a veneer of 'liberalism').
Looked at through this psychological lens, Israel and Palestinians fall into a different
place. It is a case of Israeli 'ordinary vice': Most 'golden age' Americans of course, see
Israel as walking a parallel path to their own. There is real empathy. But not so from the
'awokened' 20+ year-old, BLM-supporting, generation of Americans.
Their 'woke' ideology is radical. They view the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s as having
unequivocally sold-out. No place for compromise now: America is both innately racist and
oppressive. Its founding principles must be ripped out and replaced. BLM is waging this
struggle against the U.S. founding principles, but the fight against U.S. empire, are
one and the
same , they say.
It is not clear whether the woke 20+ generation, in alliance with BLM, has succeeded in
suborning the older, liberal generation of Democrat leaders, CEOs and senior police and
military officers who lately have knelt before the altar of the BLM agenda – or if BLM
simply is being used by the latter as a tool against Donald Trump. If the latter, it will not
be the first time that the mainstream has co-opted a radical movement to use for its own ends,
only subsequently to discover that that is they – the mainstream –were the dog
'wagged' by its radical 'tail'. (The history of Salafism and its jihadists comes to mind, in
this context.)
The question is mere quibble: What is undeniable is that wokeness is coursing through parts
of Europe and America faster than the Coronavirus infection. Whilst Israelis love diversity
politics, they are frightened by the liberal-BLM discourse of a coming struggle against racism
and oppression.
Unless this 'awokening' butts up against an early 'herd-immunity' in Europe and America,
this current will impact the region in ways that are not at this juncture foreseeable, but
likely inevitable. Already Israelis are showing greater nervousness about annexation in the
West Bank, and the Jordan Valley; and Gulf States led by the authoritarian UAE, are preparing
to cast-off from the U.S. wharf, and pleading for a new berth in a safe Israeli
harbour.
Are they sensing a change in the wind? Seeking safety? Will the region's own 20+ generation
assimilate the spirit of wokeness?
The "no-fly zone" issue is covered in a second video suggested when this one almost
ends...It is also told that Obama opposed at first the destruction of Lybia, along with the
important participation of some NATO superpowers on basis of geopolitical interests and, of
course, looting of always...It was a coalition of the willing with assorted goals...althoughm
ainly benefitted the US in its cursade on the ME...
All these wars have happened to destroy kinda powerful nations ( competing
economic/military powers...), like Lybia in Africa and Yugoslavia in Europe on behalf of
others´hegemony...
Great video that everyone should see (especially clueless Americans) but it should've
included Obama's illegally turning a "no fly" Zone into a bombing campaign.
The UN had only authorized a "no fly" zone and Obama never sought authorization from
Congress for war.
Okay, I'll bite, Jackrabbit - sorry if I haven't followed your line of thinking on CIA and
Hillary ...wanting to elect Trump??? That really doesn't make sense to me. That would mean
everything about the really outrageous campaign against Trump's presidency has been
orchestrated so we chumps wouldn't guess they really were secretly rejoicing?
Sorry, I just don't buy it. But of course, I could be wrong. Who knows what dark deeds are
being secretly devised behind all these curtains of lies? (A good reason to suppose there is
a God who sees and who will someday reveal to us mortals what has really been going on. I
can't wait to find out.)
In recently unsealed court documents involving dead child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein
and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman named Virginia Giuffre, who publicly
accused Epstein of sex trafficking, said that she once saw former Democratic President Bill
Clinton on Epstein's island with "two young girls" from New York.
In the questioning by lawyer Jack Scarola, Guiffre was asked, "Do you have any
recollection of Jeffrey Epstein's specifically telling you that 'Bill Clinton owes me
favors?'"
"Yes, I do," Guiffre answered. "It was a laugh though. He would laugh it off. You know, I
remember asking Jeffrey what's Bill Clinton doing here [on Epstein's island] kind of thing,
and he laughed it off and said well he owes me favors."
Interesting extract from Xymphora's July 31 blog entry...
Tweet (trappedpatriot):
"So they screwed up bigtime on the redactions for the Ghislaine Maxwell release today.
You can literally copy and paste the redacted pages into notepad and read them. Check out
document #143 for a great example. #Epstein #Maxwell"
The trick works (I'd like to think it is not a mistake but some direct action by a
court employee who is tired of all the lies). From document #143 (a deposition of Maxwell
where her lawyer instructs her not to answer most, but not all, questions:
...
I can wait for the Official Version but I'd be interested to hear if any of MoA's resident
sleuths have found the copy/paste assertion to be true?
It looks like they highlighted what was to be redacted in adobe instead of scanning
redacted documents manually.
Somebody screwed up? Intentionally? Mistrial for Maxwell?
Looks like Clinton "dicking (underage) blondes." I am shocked!
Trump is looking clean and I would have already guessed it with his foray into the porn
industry w/ Stormy Daniels. Whereas with paedophiles, it is about power and domination, when
you are into a chick like Daniels, you are staying simple and "keeping your cart wheel in
worn ruts." (Tao Te Ching)
"... "When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" ..."
"... "2 young girls" ..."
"... "He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" ..."
"... "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious." ..."
"... He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets. ..."
"... "young girls" ..."
"... "When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" ..."
"... "2 young girls" ..."
"... "He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" ..."
"... "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious." ..."
"... He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets. ..."
"... "he's got his own spa." ..."
"... "good friends," ..."
"... "young girls" ..."
"... "When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" ..."
"... "2 young girls" ..."
"... "He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" ..."
"... "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious." ..."
"... He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets. ..."
"... "he's got his own spa." ..."
"... "good friends," ..."
"... "sexual relations" ..."
"... "the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein's co-conspirators," ..."
"... "young girls" ..."
"... "When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was there?" ..."
"... "2 young girls" ..."
"... "He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'" ..."
"... "He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious." ..."
"... He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's pockets. ..."
"... "he's got his own spa." ..."
"... "good friends," ..."
"... "sexual relations" ..."
"... "the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein's co-conspirators," ..."
Newly unsealed files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case imply that former US President Bill Clinton visited the
investor's private island along with "young girls," and that the FBI knew well about the minors' abuse.
Comprising hundreds of
pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the
objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged
sex-trafficking operation.
The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key
after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative
blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.
Among other revelations,
the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with
"young
girls"
during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to
host regular
"sex orgies."
"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was
there?"
one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an
unidentified woman named
"Emmy"
and
"2 young
girls"
had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the
girls, however.
The same witness also told
her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him
"favors,"
but
noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.
"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing
here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'"
she said.
"He
never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."
He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's
pockets.
One of America's top law enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's
properties as far back as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her
defamation suit, Giuffre said she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew –
where he is pictured smiling with an arm around her bare waist.
In 2014, moreover, Giuffre contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her
civil case, suggesting the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement
with minor girls.
Comprising hundreds of
pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the
objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged
sex-trafficking operation.
The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key
after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative
blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.
Among other revelations,
the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with
"young
girls"
during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to
host regular
"sex orgies."
"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was
there?"
one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an
unidentified woman named
"Emmy"
and
"2 young
girls"
had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the
girls, however.
The same witness also told
her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him
"favors,"
but
noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.
"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing
here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'"
she said.
"He
never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."
He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's
pockets.
One of America's top law
enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's properties as far back
as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her defamation suit, Giuffre said
she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew – where he is pictured smiling
with an arm around her bare waist.
In 2014, moreover, Giuffre
contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her civil case, suggesting
the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement with minor girls.
Comprising hundreds of
pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the
objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged
sex-trafficking operation.
The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key
after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative
blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.
Among other revelations,
the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with
"young
girls"
during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to
host regular
"sex orgies."
"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was
there?"
one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an
unidentified woman named
"Emmy"
and
"2 young
girls"
had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the
girls, however.
The same witness also told
her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him
"favors,"
but
noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.
"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing
here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'"
she said.
"He
never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."
He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's
pockets.
One of America's top law
enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's properties as far back
as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her defamation suit, Giuffre said
she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew – where he is pictured smiling
with an arm around her bare waist.
In 2014, moreover, Giuffre
contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her civil case, suggesting
the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement with minor girls.
President Donald Trump
also made an appearance in the unsealed papers. However, an associate of Epstein, Juan Alessi, said in an interview that
Trump
"never"
stayed overnight while visiting Epstein's Palm Beach estate, and that
he did not receive any
"massages"
there, as
"he's
got his own spa."
An alleged victim also maintained that while Trump and Epstein were
"good
friends,"
Trump made no attempts to
"flirt"
with her.
Comprising hundreds of
pages of documents, the trove was released on Thursday night following a judge's order last week to have it unsealed, over the
objections of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend to Epstein who has recently been charged as an accomplice in his alleged
sex-trafficking operation.
The records stem from a 2015 defamation suit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which was placed under lock and key
after the case was settled in 2017, but was recently unsealed, as a result of a lawsuit brought last year by conservative
blogger Mike Cernovich and the Miami Herald newspaper.
Among other revelations,
the documents indicate that former US president Bill Clinton consorted with
"young
girls"
during at least one visit to Epstein's private resort in the Virgin Islands, where the billionaire was said to
host regular
"sex orgies."
"When you were present with Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton on the island, who else was
there?"
one witness – presumably Giuffre – was asked during an interview, to which she replied that Epstein, Maxwell, an
unidentified woman named
"Emmy"
and
"2 young
girls"
had been on the island with the former POTUS. The witness did not elaborate on Clinton's interactions with the
girls, however.
The same witness also told
her attorney in 2011 that she had overheard Epstein saying that Clinton owed him
"favors,"
but
noted she couldn't tell whether he was joking.
"He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey 'What's Bill Clinton doing
here?' and he laughed it off and said 'well he owes me a favor,'"
she said.
"He
never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn't know if he was serious."
He told me a long time ago that everyone owes him favors. They're all in each other's
pockets.
One of America's top law
enforcement agencies was also apparently aware that underage girls were still being abused at Epstein's properties as far back
as 2011 – years after he was sentenced for similar crimes in his first criminal case. During her defamation suit, Giuffre said
she had provided the FBI a now widely circulated photo of herself and the UK's Prince Andrew – where he is pictured smiling
with an arm around her bare waist.
In 2014, moreover, Giuffre
contacted the FBI to request evidence they had previously seized from Epstein's residences to aid her civil case, suggesting
the bureau had for long been informed of her allegations regarding Epstein and his continued involvement with minor girls.
President Donald Trump
also made an appearance in the unsealed papers. However, an associate of Epstein, Juan Alessi, said in an interview that
Trump
"never"
stayed overnight while visiting Epstein's Palm Beach estate, and that
he did not receive any
"massages"
there, as
"he's
got his own spa."
An alleged victim also maintained that while Trump and Epstein were
"good
friends,"
Trump made no attempts to
"flirt"
with her.
Despite repeatedly
insisting he had no ties to Epstein's sex-trafficking ring, legal scholar and former Harvard Law School professor Alan
Dershowitz is directly accused in the documents of having
"sexual relations"
with
an underage girl. He is also said to have witnessed
"the sexual abuse of many other
minors by Epstein and several of Epstein's co-conspirators,"
and would later help to negotiate an undisclosed immunity
deal for himself during Epstein's first criminal case.
More than 1,000 pages of
documents from Giuffre's civil defamation case had previously been released in August 2019, indicating that a long list of
wealthy and powerful figures regularly spent time with Epstein at his lavish properties. One day after that trove was
unsealed, Epstein was found hanging in his Manhattan prison cell, dead from an apparent suicide after being charged with sex
trafficking and imprisoned some weeks previously.
Maxwell was arrested and
charged with procuring minors for sexual abuse earlier this month, after keeping a low profile in the period following
Epstein's death. She has pleaded not guilty to six criminal counts and remains in custody without bail, after prosecutors had
labeled her an
"extreme"
flight risk.
Tucker Carlson described former President Obama as "one of the sleaziest and most dishonest
figures in the history of American politics" after his eulogy at the funeral of civil rights
icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on Thursday.
Carlson, who also described the former president as "a greasy politician" for calling on
Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act and to eliminate the filibuster, which Obama described
as a relic of the Jim Crow era that disenfranchised Black Americans, in order to do so.
"Barack Obama, one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures in the history of American
politics, used George Floyd's death at a funeral to attack the police," Carlson said before
showing a segment of Obama's remarks.
As Republican leaders find themselves forced to distance themselves from the president
they will also begin discussions about what their party looks like in the post-Trump era.
For starters they may want to dip into a new book by Thomas E. Patterson, a professor at
Harvard University. Titled Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself, the book outlines
five traps the party has found itself in.
Likbez , July 29, 2020 10:38 am
One of the key problem with any poll is conformism of the respondents: answering the
poll in a certain way does not necessary means that the person intends to vote this
way.
He might be simply deceiving the pollster providing the most "politically correct"
opinion. In this sense any poll conducted by an MSM does not worth electrons used to
display its results. Most people are way too smart not to feel what is expected of
them
Add to this the fact that you need to reach people on cell phones. Only a certain
category of people will answer such a call. Limiting yourself to a landline distorts the
sampling in more than one way by definition.
The key question of November elections that will never be asked in polls: Will a
majority of voters side with the protesters? Or they will view them as rioters. In the
latter case this looks like a Nixon elections replay.
Re: "The polls show Donald Trump losing to Joe Biden"
In addition to the biased, mainstream media it appears polls have become the latest
propaganda weapon of the Democrats that are meant to move public opinion, not gauge it. Of
the polls that I have looked at in detail, almost all consistently have more Democrat
participants than Republicans and very few reveal how many people were contacted and refused
to participate. In addition some of these polls use dedicated, volunteer participants that
get a daily/weekly email asking for a response to several issues. So of those polled, it
really comes down to people that don't screen their phone calls or emails and have the
inclination and free time to answer endless questions from strangers about politics. The
Democrat oversampling percentages I have observed are listed below:
ABC News/Washington Post - 2%, 3%, 4%, 6%, 7%, 8%
America Trends Panel - 16%
AP/NORC - 10%
American research Group - 9%
CBS news poll - not revealed
Change Research - 5%
CNBC - not revealed
CNN SSRS Research 7%
Democracy Fund Voter Study Group - not revealed
Democracy Institute 0%
Economist/YouGov - not revealed
Emerson - not revealed
EPIC-MIRA poll 5%
Fox News 0-10% average 6.5%
Gallup 7%
Global Strategy Group 7%
Hart research 6%
Harvard CAPS/Harris - not revealed
Hill/Harris 5%
IBD/TIPP - not revealed
Monmouth 9%, 8%
Morning Consult - 8%
New York Times-Siena College survey 11%
NBC News poll/ Wall Street Journal 12%
NBC News poll/ Survey Monkey - 8%
NPR/Marist 6%
Pew - 16%
Politico/Morning Consult 5%,10%
Public Policy Polling - 10%
Pulse Opinion Research - not revealed
Suffolk University - 5.8%
Quinnipac - 6%, 8%, 10%
Rasmussan - 4% and behind a paywall
Reuters-Ipsos 11%
Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey - behind a paywall
Yahoo News - 8%, 10%
YouGov - 8%, 10%
Zogby - 2%
Yves here. The Democrats don't want to admit that the Republicans are more ruthless and
shameless than they are. Or else they only care about winning certain elections and they are
confident in their ability to control them. The Democrats have been far more willing to play
games in primaries .
Separately, I don't get how the Democrats don't get they may be in trouble despite Biden's
big national poll lead. The Democrats have never taken voter registration seriously because
they don't want lower income voters to have too much influence in the party, and low income
voters are the most transient. Democratic party voters even more likely now due to Covid-19
financial stresses to have had an address change and need to re-register to vote. If you think
vote-by-mail schemes that are already struggling to operate properly, even assuming good faith,
will handle new registrants in their districts well, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
The original Mayor Daley wasn't the first, but he was the best at election manipulation.
Daley would have not supported verifiable elections for the obvious reason. Why don't today's
Democrats support verifiable elections?
Everyone I know wants Trump to lose. Do you know anyone who actually wants Biden to
win?"
-- Howie Klein, here
I've often contended that neither political party -- not the Democrats, not the Republicans
-- wants free, open, verifiable and uncorrupted elections.
Both parties, of course, say they want fair elections. The Republicans use these
pronouncements, though, as cover for creating obstacles to voting by Democratic-leaning
citizens based on demographics like race and place of residence. That much is a given, and this
hypocrisy is obvious to everyone,
including Republicans .
But what about the Democratic Party? There the situation is more mixed, but it's not
unmixed . I cut my adult teeth in Chicago, the perfect model, if not ground zero, for
election manipulation, and there are many Chicago's in the country.
There are also many approaches to stealing elections, but one of the most common is faked
and manipulated vote totals, and for that, the solution is well known: hand-counted paper
ballots . Given that fact, you have to ask yourself: If Democratic leaders really wanted
uncorrupted elections -- as opposed to just elections they could win -- wouldn't they demand a
national return to hand-counted paper ballots, the gold standard for honest elections
?
And yet they don't. Year after year they keep the same corruptible voting systems in place,
often expanding them, and focus their fire instead on Republican gerrymandering and voter list
purges as evidence of the other party's evil and their own goodness.
It's likely there's a simple and obvious reason for Democratic leadership not seeking to
secure our elections with hand-counted ballots, but it's not a pretty one: Like the
Republicans, Democratic leaders, many or most of whom hate progressives with a passion, also
want the ability to "fix" elections when they wish to.
"Ballot-Stuffing" in Philadelphia
For example, consider
this , from the Philly Voice:
South Philly judge of elections pleads guilty to stuffing ballot boxes, accepting
bribes
Prosecutors say Domenick DeMuro, 73, inflated results for Democratic primary
candidates
A former judge of elections in South Philadelphia pleaded guilty this week to fraudulently
stuffing ballot boxes for Democratic candidates in recent primary elections, accepting bribes
from a political consultant hired to help influence local election results.
During the 2014, 2015 and 2016 primary elections, DeMuro admitted that he accepted bribes
ranging from $300 to $5,000 per election. A political consultant hired by specific Democratic
candidates gave DeMuro a cut of his fee to add votes for these candidates, who were running
for judicial and various state, federal and local elected offices.
DeMuro would "ring up" extras votes on machines at his polling station, add them to the
totals and later falsely certify that the voting machine results were accurate, prosecutors
said.
U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain said, "DeMuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by
literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he
thought the coast was clear."
This happens all the time and is rarely caught and punished. In this case, it's
likely the bribes from a "political consultant hired by specific Democratic candidates" were
the only reason DeMoro was prosecuted. A number of hand-made videos during the 2016 primary
showed similar corrupt "certifications" at the local level, all of them disadvantaging Bernie
Sanders, yet none of these videos sparked an ounce of indignation from "free election"
Democratic leaders -- whose preferred candidate, it should be noted, Hillary Clinton, benefited
every time.
"Progressive Democrat" Blocks Gerrymandering Reform in Nevada
Or consider this sordid tale from Nevada, in which the local League of Women Voters
attempted to eliminate gerrymandering following a recent Supreme Court decision that returned
gerrymandering lawsuits to the states to resolve.
Apparently some Democrats think gerrymandering is fine in blue states
In June of 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause that federal
courts will no longer accept partisan gerrymandering cases. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for
the majority that partisan gerrymandering is a political issue that must be resolved at the
state level. In response, the League of Women Voters U.S. launched a People Powered Fair Maps
plan to create barriers to partisan gerrymandering in each state.
The League of Women Voters of Nevada adopted the plan and reached out to our democracy
partners to form the Fair Maps Nevada coalition. On November 4, 2019, Fair Maps Nevada filed
a constitutional amendment ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting
commission. Nevada's constitution protects the right to circulate a ballot initiative as well
as the right to vote on ballot questions.
So far, so good. But wait:
On November 27, 2019, Mr. Kevin Benson, a Carson City attorney, filed a lawsuit
challenging the ballot question's summary of effect for a "progressive Democrat." His
client argued that the summary of the amendment that appears on each signature sheet was
misleading. Fair Maps Nevada offered to edit the summary to clarify the amendment's intent,
but Mr. Benson refused. The Judge James Russell ultimately agreed with Mr. Benson's client
and asked both parties to submit new versions of the summary to address the plaintiff's
complaints.
It's suspicious that a self-proclaimed "progressive Democrat" would try to monkey-wrench the
process, but still, so far, so good. However:
Fair Maps Nevada submitted a new summary, but Mr. Benson did not. Instead, he argued
that the whole amendment was misleading and so should be blocked completely from moving
forward.
In other words, the whole exercise was a sham to get the entire process thrown out by the
local judge.
Essentially, Mr. Benson was asking Judge Russell to deny the Fair Maps Nevada coalition
our constitutionally protected right to circulate a petition. Judge Russell accepted Fair
Maps Nevada's new summary of the amendment and closed the case [in favor of Fair Maps
Nevada].
Still, the issue didn't die there. Benson took his appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, which
allowed it to go ahead. Fair Maps Nevada eventually won, but not before they realized (wasn't
it already obvious?) that this mystery litigant's real goal was to run out the
signature-gathering clock on the initiative. Further, the state Supreme Court failed to close
the legal loophole that allowed the appeal in the first place, preparing the way for similar
future challenges on the same spurious grounds.
Why would a Democrat , in Democratic-controlled Nevada, want to block gerrymandering
reform, if not to continue to benefit from the unreformed system?
The Danger for Democrats
The danger for Democrats in tolerating and continuing their own vote corruption is great.
When voters say "both parties do it" -- they're right. Perhaps Party leaders, national and
local, think they can get away with these acts given that most of the mainstream media -- busy
people's only source of news -- protects listeners and viewers from information that supports
the "both are corrupt" frame.
But that protection can't be effective forever. While most Sanders supporters, for example,
will vote for Joe Biden,
most won't give him money , under the assumption perhaps that his billionaires have that
covered. And this is widely seen as a race that most want neither candidate to win --
especially if you include non-voters -- even though even more voters want Trump to lose.
The bottom line is this: While Democratic leaders may think the situation -- their current
and safe control of their share of power -- is well managed, the nation may easily become so
alienated by both parties, and by the people's inability to vote outside the
two-corrupt-parties framework, that they seek "other avenues" for change.
Ironically, a "back to the normal" Biden administration may be just the match Americans need
to spark an active rebellion against the corruption of both political parties. One more round
of mainstream Democrats in charge, may be the last straw for that national beast of burden, our
suffering governed.
If that's the case, watch out. Democratic leaders are running out of time, as are we all.
When a nation seeks "other avenues" for reform, that nation's in trouble.
Yves here. We're behind on continuing with Paul Jay's important discussion with Thomas Frank
about his new book, The People, No, and the awfully open hatred in the press and contemporary
politics for the views of ordinary people. Here Frank focuses on the misuse of FDR's
legacy.
Readers like Frank's cheery tone and pleasant voice, so if you have time to listen, as
opposed to read the transcript, it's worth the extra time.
Hi, I'm Paul Jay, welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast.
This is part two of my discussion with Thomas Frank about his book, 'The People, No', I've
got to get the inflection right on that to get the proper ridicule dripping off the lips
of-
Thomas Frank
-So can I give it a shot, Paul? My daughter and I were actually working when I did the
audiobook of this. We're working on how to say the title. And here's what I finally came up
with, 'The People, No'.
Paul Jay
And anyway, once again, joining me is Thomas Frank, who has just told us how to say the
title of the book. And I assume everybody knows, but just in case, Thomas Frank is the author
of many books, most notably, 'What's the Matter with Kansas?', and he's in Kansas as we speak,
and 'Listen, Liberal', and his most recent book, he just told us how to say, 'The People, No',
and I refuse to whine, even if it captures the full meaning of the title.
All right. So we left off part one, as we head into the 1920s, the populist movement has
more or less fizzled out. It's kind of split, some of the movement has kind of assimilated into
democratic parties, some have gone into various socialist parties. And the 1920s is a period
where everyone's optimistic, capitalism seems to be just hunky-dory, lots of people are buying
into the stock market and borrowing, and there's the promise of wealth for everybody.
And then along comes The Great Crash in 1929, and we won't get into exactly why all that
happened, but not the least of which is the amount of speculation and leveraging, borrowing
money to buy stocks and other issues, and then we headed into the Great Depression. So this now
starts the beginning of -- may not have been called the next version of the populist movement,
but in substance, it's very similar.
So talk about the development of the movement in the thirties and how influenced is, what
was the populist movement coming out of areas like Kansas with the kind of socialist and
communist movement that's developing in some of the cities influenced by Marx, (Marxism is a
method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical
development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social
conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation), and socialist
movements all over the world? I guess there are separate strains, but they're certainly very
related to it.
Thomas Frank
Yeah. So to take a step back, a lot of populists, when the People's Party fell apart after
the 1896 election, a lot of them went into the Socialist Party. And in fact, Kansas had a big
socialist contingent and so did Oklahoma, Oklahoma had the most socialist per capita of any
state, which is hard to believe because Trump won every single county there.
Paul Jay
But West Virginia used to be something like that.
Thomas Frank
Exactly, the same story there. But, in the 1930s, the word populist was not used to describe
the left-wing movements of the day, but it's appropriate because, in my mind, they come out of
the same tradition, the populist tradition, Franklin Roosevelt's talks, like the populists used
to, had a lot of ideas like they used to, and even more sort of important is the labor
movement. So the populists had reached out to organized labor in the 1890s. Some unions signed
up with them, but, by and large, their leadership did not because they didn't believe in
working, they didn't believe in having a political party. And, you know, they thought they
should work through the two main parties or something like that.
And by the 1930s, labor is very different. It's really radical, it's exploding in size,
let's put it that way. People are signing up for unions all over America and organized labor
becomes the great force of the decade, the great social movement. So every bit as big and as
powerful and as strong as the farmers, as the radical farmer movement had been in the 1890s,
and there were also radical farmers in the 30s. There were a bunch of them, and in Minnesota,
you had this thing called the Farmer-Labor Party. They still exist today, now, they've been
folded into the Democratic Party, but this was their heyday. They elected a very radical
governor of Minnesota. There were similar politicians, in all sorts of different parts of
America, but basically this sort of populist dream of bringing together all these different
working-class people, it succeeds in the 1930s and you have a very radical decade.
The culture of the decade is extremely populist. I'm thinking of the WPA mural, the
Hollywood movies even, you know, made by people like Frank Capra, all of them were, and we
mentioned Carl Sandburg in the last episode, sort of the great theme of the art of the 1930s
was the nobility of the common man, the people. It went along with the left-wing politics of
the period.
And so you finally did have a regulatory state and you finally had workers that were able to
organize and the government started the income tax that began in earnest, and there is deficit
spending and the government set up relief programs, they hired people to do public works. It
was an amazing time, a time of great ferment.
So as we mentioned at the very start of the show, Paul, the book is a history of different
sort of populist chapters in American life, but more importantly, it's a history of
anti-populism, of how people opposed the populist tradition, that's much more interesting to
me.
And what you see in the 30s is, in 1932, when Roosevelt was first elected, people really
didn't know what to expect. They didn't know what kind of president he would be, his platform
looked pretty conventional. He did talk big about the New Deal, but nobody knew what he meant
by that, by 1936, however, they did know and they knew what it consisted of, and it was,
regulating banks, regulating big business, you know, all the things that I just mentioned.
And again, you had what I call a democracy scare when the members of the elite in America
come together in this kind of iron-clad consensus against what they regard as the worst
elements of society who are trying to take power and sort of inflicting taxation and regulation
on their betters. And they talk this way very openly. And the groups I'm referring to in the
1930s, it's very similar to 1896. So it's newspaper publishers, of course, the Republican
Party, of course, and then the sort of union of business interests that was called the American
Liberty League. It's the first of the great right-wing front groups, and they raised an
extraordinary amount of money, they had more than a political party, more than the Republican
Party, and spent it to bring Roosevelt down.
And just like 1896, went on the warpath against him in this incredible way. And I, again,
have a lot of fun in the book quoting and giving illustrations of what their war on Roosevelt
looked like, it's very funny, but again there's a reason historians don't write about this
stuff, it's revolting, there's a lot of scientific racism that's bound up in the war on
Roosevelt, because, as I said, it's a democracy scare. So it's not just that they're angry at
Roosevelt, they perceive that the deplorables are coming to get them. You know, it's the whole
sort of bottom half of society is trying to get above its station, is trying to order its
betters around.
Paul Jay
There's a section of the U.S. elites that were very pro-Hitler, starting, of course, with
Henry Ford who was a sort of well-known one. It was given the equivalent of the Iron Cross by
Hitler.
Thomas Frank
Wait, isn't that Lindbergh?
Paul Jay
No, no. Henry Ford. Ford used to send Hitler, I think it was $500,000 every year on his
birthday (in today's dollars).
Thomas Frank
Oh, my God.
Paul Jay
And Hitler actually credited Ford with inspiring his anti-Semitism and opening his eyes to
the threat of the Jews
Thomas Frank
Really?
Paul Jay
Oh yeah, Hitler was a big fan of Ford and vice versa.
Thomas Frank
I was surprised at how much fascism there was in the United States in the 30s. William
Randolph Hearst ran newspaper columns by Göring, I didn't know that. I mean, there were
all sorts of little local fascist groups that were set up to break strikes, that sort of
thing.
Paul Jay
General Motors was arming Hitler. When Hitler invaded Poland, he was doing it in vehicles
made by GM.
Thomas Frank
What really got me, Paul, is reading through the sort of barrage of hate directed at
Roosevelt, and it's like I say, it's almost exactly analogous to what they did to William
Jennings Bryan in 1896, and I was reading through it. You know, the Internet is such a
wonderful thing, Paul, you can do this research without going to the archives or to the
library, right, but you don't have to spend every waking hour there anymore, you can do so much
of it over the Internet. I was able to read all of these pamphlets issued by the American
Liberty League, many of which were transcriptions of radio speeches and the red-baiting of
Roosevelt is just incredible. And as I mentioned before, the eugenics, I was so surprised at
how many times these antagonists of the New Deal, and these are prestigious men, these are
leading economists, leading lawyers, leading captains of industry, came back to eugenics as a
way of describing what they were trying to say, which is that the ruling class rules because
they are better people.
Paul Jay
So FDR does not try to have, quote-unquote, bipartisan politics because of this populous
support, he fights his enemies, he does not try to compromise with these other sections of the
elites, which is kind of in itself fascinating. And then he picks --
Thomas Frank
They do offer the olive branch to him very early on. The elites say you know, go back on the
gold standard, stop encouraging workers to organize, this is what the National Association of
Manufacturers, one of the big corporate front groups, said to him. And he and his associates
basically laughed it off. They're like, 'no way, no way are we doing that', and so then the war
was on, yes, and he did not compromise.
This is one of the most extraordinary things about Roosevelt, he fought them very
forthrightly and was really upfront about it, gave prime time radio speeches about what he saw
happening. 'We have taken the power away from this country's dynastic rulers and they want
their power back', and he said this to the American people, and it rang true. I mean, they
could see that that was the case in their own lives.
Paul Jay
And he advocated something that, frankly, even Bernie Sanders didn't advocate, although I'm
sure he supports, Roosevelt advocated public ownership, though. He talked about the electrical
utilities.
Thomas Frank
Yes.
Paul Jay
And if they can't service the population with effective and reasonably priced electricity,
then they should be taken over and turned into publicly owned utilities, and you can extend
that principle.
Thomas Frank
Yes, he did say that, and that's the famous, what's the law called, PUHCA (Public Utility
Holding Company Act ), I'm trying to remember what it stands for. It finally got repealed and
or mostly got repealed of one of the big deregulatory measures a couple of decades ago.
Paul Jay
You once said something to me in one of the interviews we did earlier, "that the liberal
elites that run the Democratic Party, the aristocracy of the Democratic Party, it's not that
they don't like the left of the party, Bernie Sanders and such, they hate it," you said, I'm
quoting you.
Thomas Frank
They just despise them, yeah.
Paul Jay
And I think it's really interesting that they idealize or idolize FDR, but they despise the
actual policies he advocated and the people that supported him.
Thomas Frank
That is exactly right they like him because he was a winner, and look, he is the reason you
have a Democratic Party today. It all goes back to Franklin Roosevelt. So they admire him
because he was a master politician. I was reading one of the biographies of him, they said you
could take a map of America and draw a line across it, and every county that the line went
through, Roosevelt could tell you who it voted for, who is in charge in that county, what the
issues were that the people there cared about, etc. So he was an excellent, preternaturally
good politician. And, yeah, if it wasn't for him the Democratic Party would not really exist
today. So they have to admire him. But, yeah, you're exactly right, they hate and despise the
kind of people that supported him and that made up his administration, and that we're doing
things in the 1930s that made this country a middle class.
You know, Paul all my conversations with you, we come back to the ironies of American
history. The success of the New Deal gives you, in turn, the great middle class, suddenly
blue-collar workers are paid, not suddenly but you give the New Deal a couple of decades to
work, and by the 1960s, blue-collar workers are being paid. They're middle-class citizens and
they have a house in the suburbs and they have two cars and etc., and a lot of them become
Republicans. I'm sorry, that's too much, I bit off too much there. I want to go back to the
30s, I want to stick with Roosevelt.
So the campaign against him is shocking, but it involves the same kind of iron-clad
consensus of elites that you saw in the 1890s. And I think the best illustration of this is,
one I just found by chance. I was reading, of all things, Thomas Hart Benton's memoirs. Benton
was from Kansas City. And I finally got around to reading his memoirs, I meant to read it for
many years. He used to just drive around the state of Missouri, just meeting people, you know,
taking pictures of them, you know, painting them, and that summer he describes, you know,
driving around, meeting people, and he's in the home of a banker somewhere, a retired banker, a
man of standing, and Benton apparently makes the grave faux pas of saying something nice about
the New Deal, you know, and the banker just erupts and talks about how we're going to put your
class back in their place and we have the machine guns and this kind of thing, this is a most
extraordinary outburst. But that was the feeling on the ground, this hatred of Roosevelt, the
newspapers of this country just absolutely despised the man.
And I take a whole lot of illustrations of this from the Chicago Tribune, which is legendary
for their anti-Roosevelt invective. They would put every day on the front page or there would
be a little notice at the bottom, this is in 1936, leading up to the election, it would say
"You have X number of days in which to save your country", however many days it was counting
down to the election and they did this every day, and you can look it all up, its all easy to
find online now, you can go back and read your Chicago Tribune and they would run an editorial
every day under the headline "Throw the Rascals Out", you know, denouncing Roosevelt as a
communist, denouncing him as, "it's class war", these people are incompetent, these people are
paranoid, these people are mentally ill, "they" meaning the new dealers. You know, this is the
worst elements of society trying to lorded over their rightful masters, this is the world
turned upside down, that's how they greeted the New Deal, and then, of course, he won in one of
the greatest landslides of all time, Roosevelt totally prevailed.
So they were able to defeat William Jennings Bryan with this strategy, but Roosevelt beat
them. He had the radio, he had his support among the people. His support was very strong, they
could see he wasn't really a communist, he wasn't really crazy, he wasn't a dictator, he wasn't
an authoritarian, they could see that and they could hear his voice on the radio. And he won in
this overwhelming landslide. Where was I going with all this? The thing is that it was another
democracy scare, so this was a pattern, Paul, that recurs throughout American history. In 1896,
then again in 1936, and it always consists of the same thing, so the press comes together
unanimity, you have this coming together of academics, there are all of these statements signed
by a whole bunch of economists, something that you see, again, in our own time. But orthodoxy,
orthodoxy is the key orthodoxy came together against Roosevelt and his experimentation. And
this whole idea of the unfit members of society rising up against their betters.
Paul Jay
So we head into World War Two, and I'm going to just jump through so many things that one
should talk about if you're digging into this.
Thomas Frank
But that's what the book does, the whole idea is to do this episodically because you can't
do the whole history, right.
Paul Jay
I want to hit something that maybe isn't as touched into the book, but I think we need to
talk about, Roosevelt's vice president by this point is Henry Wallace. And it's really of
mainstream politicians that really embody these kinds of progressive, populist, socialist
ideals it's certainly as socialistic as you'd get it in a vice president.
Thomas Frank
Yeah, and from Iowa, from this sort of radical farmer. Actually, he didn't think of himself
as a radical, but he was from this sort of farmer background, farmer labor background-
Paul Jay
-The policy he came to in the end was as radical as anything you could find him, and that
kind of politics. But at the Democratic convention, I guess it's in 1945
Thomas Frank
1944, yeah, they tossed him overboard.
Paul Jay
They dump Wallace, Truman becomes president. Then Truman drops atomic weapons on Japan and
is part of, goes along with ushering in the House un-American Activities Committee,
McCarthyism, which attacks anything that's certainly anything communists, socialists, but even
anything populist, anything that even smells slightly of a kind of left populism gets viciously
attacked and, you know, practically drives it underground in the 1950s.
Thomas Frank
Yeah.
Paul Jay
And that becomes who the Democratic Party is for quite some time.
Thomas Frank
Yeah, but I would go easier on Truman than that. It is true that he sort of unleashed the
McCarthyism, but he clearly thought it was out of hand when McCarthy got going. You know,
McCarthy called him a communist.
Paul Jay
Yeah, well, not just the McCarthyism, because there's no bigger democracy scare than the
Cold War.
Thomas Frank
Yeah. Well, that's another great moment of hysteria. I'm getting way ahead of myself here,
but I feel often like we're living through some version of that again today, you know, but
we'll talk about that later. What they did to, Henry Wallace is one of the heroes of the book,
so Henry Wallace also was a great user of the populist language. He wrote a book even called,
'The Century of the Common Man', and it was supposed to be his reply, his pushback to when Time
magazine said that this is the American century, he said, no, this is the century of the common
man. That kind of language was very common in the New Deal days, and especially during the
World War Two iteration of the New Deal when they were trying to persuade the rest of the world
that we were not just fighting to rescue the British Empire, which is what we turned out to
do.
Truman was clearly less radical than Wallace, but he did do a couple of really wonderful
things. And one of them, I mean, they didn't get anywhere, but he's the one that proposed
universal health care for America and really fought for it and was beaten on this, this is
within two years of the end of World War two, the right is pushing back in exactly the way that
you just described, and his universal health care never gets anywhere, but we've never got it
in this country, and damn, it would be nice if we had it now, I keep thinking about that as we
go through this epidemic.
Paul Jay
See, the way I see it, from Truman, and then you get into, and Kennedy, and the party gives
up this kind of, real policies to some extent rhetorical, but actual policies of Roosevelt, of
taking on the concentration of wealth, taking on the big banks. There's a fascinating quote
from Roosevelt where he says "this merging of corporate interests and the government and the
state is the definition of fascism", and it's in one of Roosevelt's speeches.
The Democratic Party turns its back on all of that after World War Two and becomes
(associated) with Kennedy, the party of the greatest expenditure on the military-industrial
complex ever, it starts with Truman. Ellsberg has an interesting quote, Daniel Ellsberg,
Pentagon papers, he said he thinks now, he said, "the Cold War was essentially a commercial
subsidy for the aerospace industry, they needed an excuse to spend all this money on
bullshit.
Thomas Frank
That's pretty cynical, but it's hard to avoid that conclusion when you live in, nowadays,
when you live in Washington, D.C. One of my friends was describing this the other day, he said
basically, " we fight these wars is just as a way of subsidizing these companies", that's what
we have the army for, it's just a subsidy racket for these private companies.
Paul Jay
The whole SAGE radar system, the thing, like Dr. Strangelove, a total fraud, never worked
for a day, over a trillion dollars over 25 years, goes on and on where the whole
military-industrial complex fight fundamentally driven by commercial interests with the excuse
being the Cold War. But the reason I'm going there is because the Democratic Party, at least an
important part of it, and the party still continue to control the machinery of it, is very much
that party and which includes the Vietnam War, and it's that section of the Democratic Party
that so despises what they call populism.
Thomas Frank
So I talk a lot in the book about the populist culture of the 1930s, and one of the sorts of
great expressions of that period was this movie 'Citizen Kane', which I'm sure you've seen and
I myself seen many times, but while I was writing the book, I finally got to see it in high
definition one of these modern TV sets. And I was really struck by it because, it's on the one
hand, very, you know, populist as all the stuff from that period is, but it's also the story of
a demagogue and the sort of left culture of the 1930s was very, very, very concerned with the
problem of the demagogue. But the fascinating point is that they could draw a bright line
between the demagogue and between legitimate populism. So Kane is the great demagogue and he's
appealing to the underprivileged and the underfed and all this, and it's all bullshit, and
everyone can see that. And, the other characters in the movie sort of reminding him of how full
of shit he is. Here's the thing that I want your that people don't remember, that's Donald
Trump's favorite movie.
Thomas Frank
Oh, he totally misunderstands it. He thinks that the demagogue character in the movie, Kane,
Citizen Kane is the hero. He doesn't get it.
So there's this moment where Kane is running for governor of New York and he's in speaking
in Madison Square Garden. And he's giving this kind of Trumpian speech, and there's this huge
picture of his own face behind it with his name in gigantic letters, and it's like that's what
they did at the Republican convention in 2016, remember Trump's name in huge letters, Trump
puts his name on everything. And one of the promises that Kane makes in this speech, do you
remember this, is to lock up his rival, he's going to throw his rival in prison and lock him
up. I was watching this and I'm like, oh, my God.
I suddenly get where Trump came up with all this crap. But there's this scene where that I
never noticed until I saw it on a high definition TV. Kane is talking to his wife or something,
there's a closeup on his face, he's wearing a fancy tie with a stick pin in it, and the stick
pin is the letter K, great big gold K, that's Trump. It's everything about Trump, these
incredible narcissists, you know.
It's a demagogue based on William Randolph Hearst, as imagined by Orson Welles, and this is
Trump's hero. Isn't that amazing?
Paul Jay
Okay, well, I'm jumping, too, but I've been wanting to ask you this, so now as good a time
as any, why does that type of narcissist, at least now days appeal to so many rural and some
working-class urban, but more rural, people, a complete, utter narcissistic character, so
obvious to see, and he's not the only one that appeals to people like that, why?
Thomas Frank
Oh, my God, Paul. That should be the subject of my next book, but there are so many people
that have tried to understand that. So we're putting aside, you know, the possible legitimate
reasons people might have for voting for Trump, which you and I have talked about at great
length, putting out some ideas, yeah, there are some. And we're also putting aside the sort of
scapegoating reasons, the sort of racist reasons that people might have voted for him. And
you're talking about something else, which I think is bound up in our mass culture in this
country and in sort of the logic of TV, the logic of specifically of reality TV, which has
taken over television entertainment. And yet people think there's something normal about that.
They think there's something maybe even admirable about that, by the way, I would include, I
think the left has gone down this path to a certain degree also, and we'll talk about this, I
hope, later on, what I call the utopia of scolding. I can't understand the logic of it because
it's not how you build a political movement.
Paul Jay
Let's hang on to that, because I think that's really important, and we're gonna do that in
the next segment. But I want to go at this a little more because it's not just a political
figure like Trump. I've always found it fascinating, I cannot quite understand a culture, which
at least until very recently, was very homophobic, loved Liberace, I mean, the gayest guy you
could find. I mean even somebody as narcissistic as Elvis Presley, I don't know the kind of
gold and stuff he wore. I mean, there's a reason why you go into a transvestite and other kinds
of clubs where people portray different characters and they love to portray Elvis Presley
because of the flamboyancy. How does that appeal to conservative rural Americans?
Thomas Frank
The same people who loved Woody Guthrie and the Joads (Grapes of Wrath), you know, we're the
people we keep on acomin'. Paul, I don't know the answer to that. Even if I did, I couldn't do
it in one minute, so.
That's the next book, man.
Paul Jay
Okay, that's the end of part two, we're going to do a part three with Thomas, please join us
for that on theAnalysis.news podcast.
TBH, I can't comment too much of FRD's domestic policies, because I never dug deep into
the domestic US politcs of the time, but his foreign policy was appaling, and to a large
extent was responsible (in not a good way) for the post WW2 world.
FDR was entirely naive in dealing with Stalin, who he tried to charm and failed miserably
while falling for Stalin's "intimacy". FDR's "Atlantic declaration" was nice in theory, but
in practice he ignored it, trying to run the same realpolitiks as before (for example,
sacrificing Polish London govt for Stalin's support of the UN's idea. Which was ironic,
because it was more or less proving that the UN would be mostly ineffectual anyways. Better
than the lame League of Nations, but ineffectual nevertheless).
His China politcs was a mess (appointing Stillwell to head China there was as dumb as it
comes because Stillwell understood nothing about fighting there) arguably directly leading to
the Chinese communist winning the inevitable civil war (and also arguably pushing Chiang from
a reformist to reactionary. There are historians who say that today's China is what Chian's
envisioned in 1930, as opposed to what Mao did)
His inability to deal with de Gaulle was famous (mind you, hardly anyone could, but in the
end the British had a better relationship with him than Americans, which few would have
believed before the war), and I could go on.
Do you mean Chinault, not Stilwell? I'd always had the impression that Stillwell was a
good soldier, but a lousy diplomat (despite his fluent mandarin and general sympathy for
ordinary Chinese). Chinault is I think considered to have been something of a disaster by
most historians of the period and he left a hell of a mess. China was such a confusing mess
at the time its hard to see what would have been the 'right' strategy for any outsider,
although it was certainly right to try to stop the Japanese from completely conquering the
country.
Stillwell hated Chennault (and vice versa), and in that row he (Stillwell) was actually
right, as Chennault held the dumb (but seems widely shared by some Allied commanders) idea
that you can win a war by bombing alone.
Stillwell's problem was the total inability to grasp the fact that the Chinese army (and,
to a large extent, Chindits and Marauders) didn't operate like the US land forces did. As in
the average Chinese consript was often conscripted forcefully, underfed, w/o any effective
armaments etc., fighting in environments that even trained Western soldiers struggled, yet
Stillwell kept asking things of them as if they were well trained and equipped troops
fighting somewhere on the plains of the US. And when they didn't perform, he blamed them, not
the himself, which pissed off many Chinese and British commanders who understood what was
happening on the ground much better.
Stillwelll also forced Chinese to concentrate on areas that sort of made sense
strategically, but caused them to lose/abandon areas that they had to hold on to feed the
army (as much as they could) – which he ignored. Say Burma was strategically important,
but it didn't help to feed Chinese army a whit.
For his good points, he did keep asking for more materiel, which FDR routinely denied (and
when anything was sent, it was sent to Chennault), but it was still w/o fully understanding
the practicalities on the ground.
The whole point of FDR's China policy was to keep China in the war with Japan. Which
Chiang knew, and often tried to blackmail the US by threatening to make peace with Japan.
This was way less efficient after it became apparent that the USSR would, sooner or later, go
into war with Japan as well.
But FDR tended to overpromise on materiel and under-deliver. Which was, in a way, one of
the reasons why at one time Chiang asked FDR for a massive loan which was refused (and
presented in the US media as "Chiang wants to cash that check for himself". No doubt
non-trivial part of the money would be gone, but likely still some would make it to the
troops in forms of materiel).
From that perspective, I believe McArthur was the best at playing the "get me the
resources" game in the US army, but that was likely because FDR saw him as a real threat if
McArthur decided to run for a president. There were rumours at the time that FDR struck a
deal with McArthur that he (McA) wouldn't run against FDR and in return he would be given
resources and a relatively free hand to fullfill his "I shall return".
Thanks for that, despite my interest in the period, I haven't read up much on the US
perspective of the politics and military in China. Stillwell certainly had a very low opinion
of the British high brass, with pretty good reason and that coloured a lot of his decision
making. I suspect that like many military men, he was good at tactics but lousy at strategy.
Chennault (sorry for the bad spelling above) was a terrible choice in so many ways for a
mission like that. The entire land war in Asia was a mess of incompetence, cowardice and
corruption from the point of view of the Allies, Mao was lucky in his enemies.
I think you could also argue that had Japan not taken the bait laid out by FDR
(admittedly, the fuel embargo was probably justified on the basis of the massacres the
Japanese were busy carrying out), then they could well have won a land war in Asia,
especially as they had learned the hard way not to challenge the Soviets.
Chennault was a prima-donna with way overblown idea of himself, fuelled by the press
(what's new?).
Stillwell was actually pretty good logistician (as was many of the US generals TBH), his
real problem was that he was xenophobe IMO (it was very clear with British, he was massively
anglophobic), but he never really cared to understand anyone else except for the US (and US
troops). I believe that when he was given Okinawa command later on (with US troops), he
performed pretty well.
The history of the WW2 generalship is really fascinating, as while there was a lot of
politicking and infighting in Red Army (the massive RA casualties in battle of Berlin are a
direct consequences of his rivalry with Konev and Staling egging both of them to be "the
conquror of Berlin"), and with Whermacht (worse llater on when being a Hitler yes-man was
more and more important than any military competence), the UK and US armies were really
almost non-functional. Monty for the UK was really a large PR machine (he was handing out his
signed photos to the press), and while he was a good trainer, he was terrible at both tactics
(he hated tanks, which he equated with cavalry) and strategy. His most famous victory at
El-Alamein was actually prepared by Auchinleck and Monty's plan (feint in the south) didn't
work, so he went to brute force, and failed to use the breakthrough. He was famously
cautious, except for Market Garden, which was his idea..
US army had its (very large) share of primadonnas – most people know about Patton,
McArthur etc, but say Mark W. Clark was referred by his soldiers as Marcus Aurelius Clarkus,
because he insisted of all photos taken of him to take his "imperial nose", and got obsessed
with taking Rome for the headlines.
When you read some of the details of those things, you sort of wonder how the hell Allies
could have managed to win, when as often as not the unit next door was seen as much of an
enemy as the Germans by their commanders.
Had to go digging into Wikipedia but wasn't Chennault's second wife, Anna Chennault
– born Chan Sheng Mai – a force to be reckoned with herself in American politics
for decades? I remembered that she had a role in spiking the peace talks for Vietnam so that
Richard Nixon could win the Presidency and Wikipedia conformed it-
[McCarthyism is] another great moment of hysteria. I'm getting way ahead of myself here,
but I feel often like we're living through some version of that again today, you know, but
we'll talk about that later.
I kind of wish Frank had decided to go there, because I think there's a lot of mileage in
that. (Though I can't blame him for ultimately declining to.) If we see mid-twentieth-century
anti-communism's purpose as providing a means to purge a very broad swathe of the left via
guilt by association and innuendo, rather than being primarily aimed at the small number of
actually existing communists, then the current ways in which moral "hysteria" around identity
is being instrumentalised by antileft liberals and centrists seem very similar. In the UK,
the AS smear is being used extremely effectively to drive off what remains of the formerly
resurgent economic left from Labour. What Frank Furedi calls the "movement without a name"
currently sweeping through Anglosphere institutions seems likely to have a similar effect:
driving out or silencing economic leftists who are unwilling to publicly join in narrowly
"centring" Left priorities on identity issues, rather than class or "universal concrete
benefits."
What we have to keep stressing is that people like RLB aren't the "collateral damage" of
these forms of reaction and counter-revolution occasionally overreaching; they're the actual
primary targets.
I was shocked by Frank's total suppression of The Kingfish from his discussion of US
populism in the 1930's. The plutocratic contumely against Huey Long was even worse than
against FDR, and it continues unabated to this day amongst our FDR-admiring Newdealer
Liberalists. No "great writer" ever perpetrated an "All The King's Men" to slander FDR, but
the Lone Nut assassination in 1935, which was indispensable to Roosevelt's 1936 reelection,
has never received the critical exposure that befell its historical successors (JFK, RFK,
Malcolm, MLK). Only slightly less shocking was Frank's treatment of Henry Wallace, who was
chosen by FDR as his war VP in 1940, after "Dr. New Deal" had been proclaimed dead and
replaced by "Dr. Win The War"; and was dumped by FDR (not by some agentless "they") for the
candidate of the racist Pendergast Machine (heir of the Border Ruffians well known to Frank's
Kansas).
Party leaders, such as James F. Byrnes, strongly opposed his renomination. They regarded
Wallace as being too far to the left, too "progressive" and too friendly to labor to be
next in line for the Presidency.
Outgoing Democratic National Committee chairman Frank C. Walker, incoming chairman
Robert E. Hannegan, party treasurer Edwin W. Pauley, strategist Edward J. Flynn, Chicago
Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly and lobbyist George E. Allen all wanted to keep Wallace off the
ticket.
Their group was deemed by Allen as "The Conspiracy of the Pure in Heart."
They privately told Roosevelt that they would fight Wallace's renomination, and they
proposed Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman as FDR's new running mate.
I'm not sure how seriously one should take Citizen Kane as a social critique. Pauline Kael
called it a "shallow masterpiece" and perhaps that's why our less than deepthink president
likes it–because it's one of the most entertaining movies ever made and, yes, about a
larger than life figure who likes to see his name in big letters.
The more interesting question is why Trump–a completely different character than
FDR–generates the same kind of hysteria among the elites. Clearly even faux populism is
seen as a huge threat that must be strangled in the crib. And it isn't just the elites as the
left in general doesn't seem to think much of those "bitter clinger" rural white people.
Perhaps we as a society should spend a lot less time judging each other and more time devoted
to practical solutions–Roosevelt's true, rather non ideological legacy.
That was an interesting bit. Also interesting that the elites in both parties attack T in
the same way earlier elites attacked earlier populists – russia and Putin being the
modern standin for 'the devil'. ;) One interesting thing Enjeti on Rising said yesterday is
that T numbers among the working class – white, latino, black – are rising as a
proportion of the GOP voters, and that the only group pushing up Bidens numbers are middle
and upper middle class suburban voters. I haven't seen the polls, except Biden has a problem
with latino voters.
I never thought about the Citizen Kane comparison but it seems apt. T may be a demagogue.
But he did pull out the TPP and TPIP treaty negotiations, even as he gives the elites every
tax break and bailout money they ask for. But pulling out of the elites cherished trade deals
was beyond the pale, and they will not forgive him no matter how much else he gives them.
(Killing the Post Office or SS will destroy his support among the working class, imo.)
An aside: Huey Long was called a demagogue by the elites, too. Maybe that's why Frank
didn't cover him.
In today's second segment with Thomas Frank about his new book The People, No Paul Jay
pondered why rural Americans sidle up to the likes of Trump, or Liberace, or Elvis (or
professional wrestling) and came up with no explanation that, as Thomas Frank said, could be
provided in "one minute". Here is a thought: cultural conservatives (i.e., "rural Americans")
tend toward the myth, the narrative, fantasy. Trump, Liberace, Elvis, professional wrestling,
religion, military might, American Exceptionalism, freedom, the American Dream, Manifest
Destiny, MAGA. Sometimes even conspiracy theory (Alex Jones). All part of the peddled myth.
On the other hand, the "left" is not so susceptible to the myth and does a better job of
sorting bullshit from the truth. Thus they understand that Trump – and lots else about
America – is a con or, put more mildly, part of the national narrative, the myth
offered by powerful elite storytellers that is used to bind us together.
On the other hand, the "left" is not so susceptible to the myth and does a better job
of sorting bullshit from the truth.
Yes. It's too bad so many on the left talk down to rural Americans, people in flyover, and
consider them write-offs instead of people willing to engage.
The nat Dems ignore flyover even as state Dem parties beg for resources. There used to be
many Dems elected to Congress from flyover – mostly from the populist tradition.
Starting at least 25 years ago the Dem party decided to ignore midwestern Dems. imo. In the
90's even my red state sent Dems to Congress. People in my state didn't suddently swing hard
right, the Dem estab stopped caring about winning state and nat elections in flyover. Maybe
we didn't have enough mega-rich industries with lots of money to feed the nat. Dem
appetite.
Funny, plenty of conservatives think similar things about the Left (at least the non-Woke
folks): lots to agree on when it comes to diagnosing the problems, and many enemies in
common, but dangerously naive (susceptible to myth) when it comes to solving them, especially
using government power.
'Cultural conservatives' in my experience tend to be primarily people of faith who live by
moral codes. Typically they also think life would be better if everyone followed those codes.
Some may be hypocrites, but that's not a given. (And yes, I get that many left progressives
are also people of faith)
I think the flag waving Nascar American Dream types you're describing are more
libertarians, who idealize self-reliance and free will. They might also profess faith, but
they don't really want the preacher all up in their business any more than the gubmint. They
typically don't spend much time thinking about what other folks ought to do, other than take
care of their own business and leave them alone.
Ford, General Motors and scores of other companies sure had a keen eye for foreign
investments, didn't they? /s
Frank covers more history, threads and intriguing rabbit holes than the typical past
student was likely to encounter, unless really motivated toward much independent research to
find those somewhat hidden sources. Now, eightyish years after the fact, some of the
information is leaking out more widely.
Does anybody know if Thomas Frank mentions the 1934 Business Plot, aka The White House
Putsch in his new book? I hope that he does as it would not be complete account of these
times without mention of that little episode to show the lengths the opposition was willing
to go.
Of course they do. FDR was the quintessential machine politician and worked to STOP the
New Deal by (and stop me if you've heard this one before) using the conservative wing of the
party as an institutional monkey wrench. There is a whole chapter dispelling the
beatification of FDR in Walter Karp's Indspensable Enemies: The Politics of
Misrule in America , walking through the handbrakes he, unforced, placed on the New
Deal. Whatever bourgeios hagiographies Frank is reading, he needs to pull his head out of his
"master narrative" and understand how power works.
It's clear that ruling classes are, every single one, irresponsible, malicious,
mendacious, and downright deadly. Isn't it time we reconsider whether we shouldn't eliminate
the entire line of business and replace them with citizen democracy rather than bourgeois
democracy? I believe so.
(A little add-on note: freedom and liberty are diametric opposites. Freedom is the
condition of not being bossed. Liberty is the ability to boss others. Note carefully how
these have been propagandistically conflated in neoliberal discourse.)
Nancy Pelosi And Liz Cheney Unite Against Putting America First
Ending wars is the one truly heretical act in Washington. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 21: U.S.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) speaks during a news conference with House Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy (R-CA) and other Republican members of the House of Representatives at the Capitol on
July 21, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
After President Trump stated his desire to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Germany and
South Korea, the bipartisan war party sprang into action.
Veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress approved a defense appropriations bill that
authorizes $740 billion in military spending. Along with all the other dubious and downright
awful provisions, the House's version of the bill has included a measure designed to thwart the
president from bringing troops home. House Democrats worked with Liz Cheney (R-WY) on an
amendment putting several conditions on the administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan,
requiring the White House to certify at several stages that further reductions wouldn't
jeopardize counterterrorism or national security.
This episode captures why the Washington establishment loathes President Trump. Hint: it has
nothing to do with the smears accusing him of racism or Russian sympathies.
Trump is the only president to challenge the internationalist interventionist orthodoxy
that's ruled Washington unquestioned for the last 70 years.
Let's go back to 1949, to the creation of NATO and the initial deployment of troops to
Europe.
Joe Stalin and world communism was on the march, we were told. Russia controlled half of
Europe and would take the rest -- along with Korea -- unless we acted. President Truman
demanded American boys be ready to fight Russia in Germany, Japan, Greece, Turkey, Korea,
wherever.
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But even in that climate of crisis, support for permanent war was not unanimous.
Senator William "Wild Bill" Langer (R-North Dakota), one of the eleven Republicans in
opposition (along with just two Democrats) called NATO "a barren military alliance directed to
plunge us deeply into the economic, military and political affairs of the other nations of
Europe."
We're still plunging new depths, ever seeking new frontiers and new missions for the barren
alliance.
When President Trump declared before the immobile faces of
Mt. Rushmore , "A nation must care for its own citizens first. We must take care of America
first," he was channeling that original America Firster, Joe Kennedy.
The man who would father three senators and a president offered this advice in 1950 (none of
his children took it): America needs "to get out of Korea" and "apply the same principle to
Europe." We must "conserve American lives for American ends, not waste them in the freezing
hills of Korea or the battle-scarred plains of Western Germany."
Or in the mountains of Afghanistan or the deserts of the Middle East.
When you hear President Trump ask NATO countries to up their defense spending, compare that
to the words of Joe Kennedy: "We cannot sacrifice ourselves to save those who do not wish to
save themselves."
Nancy Pelosi and her ilk call Trump a Russian asset for daring to put the interests of this
country before empire. Nothing new there. Today's Russia-baiters are cut from the same cloth as
an earlier generation of liberals.
In 1951, The Nation magazine accused "Herbert Hoover and a good portion of the
Republican Party" of being captured by Moscow -- that portion opposed to NATO, because Hoover
doubted the effectiveness of deploying ground troops against the communist nations.
The New Republic seconded the motion: refusing to commit American troops to NATO "may
lead Stalin to attack Western Europe" and keep advancing until his minions "would bring out in
triumph the first Communist edition of the Chicago Tribune ." Mitt Romney and his fellow
impeachment travelers remain convinced we must
fight the Russians over there so we don't have to fight them over here!
Back then, the bipartisan war party insisted the president could send troops abroad without
asking Congress. Now when President Trump wants to bring them home, Congress claims it has the
authority to stop him. Whatever it takes to keep the war machine properly greased.
Until Trump, George McGovern was the only candidate of a major party to call for drawing
down troops in Europe and Korea. The sentiment in McGovern's 1972 acceptance speech is pure
America First: "This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to
rebuilding our own nation."
The establishment has hated McGovern ever since for the same reason they hate President
Trump.
The America First program would dismantle the imperial project that brought us NATO and has
kept us on permanent war footing until today.
The foreign policy sachems built a "post-war rules based international order" on the premise
the United States can and must remake the world. They stationed our troops abroad and launched
wars with no end. They merged the American economy with that of the rest of the world,
destroying America's industries, high wage scales and standard of living in the process. They
constructed a permanent national security state with unchecked powers to pursue anyone
including the president.
The precious "rules based international order" is empire by another name. To those who
support it -- Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, neoconservative, academics,
lobbyists and pundits -- it is the One True Faith.
Anyone who opposes it is anathema. Even the elected President of the United States.
Yup, US intentions are always good and pure and if it fails, that was a mistake. While
Daniel Larison gives a nice review of the book "The Liberal Order That Never Was", he only
read the introduction. The actual book is a searing dismantling of all the pompous BS
Liberalism coming for decades from Washington DC, a high intellectual feat, superbly
argued, which should become a reference for anyone interested in these things. Personally I
thank the author, Mr. Porter, for providing unbeatable arguments for any future debate on
the matter.
As for the pax britannica, same stickThe War Nerd has some strong words to say about the
Brits and their excellent Victorian PR machine that was completely silent on all the crimes
against humanity committed by the Brits (here I have to recognize their actions against
slavery).
As for Iran, it had a counter-revolution after the nationalist government lead by
Mossadegh was overturned and replaced by the US installed Shah. But since 1978 or so, the
second uprising made Iran a Republic, Islamic first, nationalist second, and semi-socialist
third. They do not need Oligarchic inspired counter-revolutions, to subjugate their economy
and population to the Wall Street inspired "liberal order", brought by bombs,
assassinations, and lies, all with the goal of looting the country's resources.
And what are you drinking mate? "US selflessly assumed"? Or you are high? Or you are a
hypocrite? I don't have another explanation.
Or we could just have a multi-polar balance of power where each nation deals with its
own spheres of influence. Its not our role to bring freedom everywhere (I reject the idea
that US intervention brings peace in any way) to the world, if the world wishes to have
freedom they should forge it for themselves. Doing so usually leaves the countries we bring
"freedom" to worse off, with its populace having no greater amount of freedom than before
hand. The role of our foreign policy should be defense of the nation and restrained use of
any military forces. If we want to advocate for peace on the world we can do it through
diplomatic channels and not through invading and bombing seven countries while arming
groups we consider to be "moderate".
Putting America First should mean restoring access to objective truth, and restoring
freedom of speech and thought. [We cannot continue in a situation where marxist zealots
control all our institutions and all our information.]
The American Left rant endlessly about the evil white supremacists. Yet they themselves
seem to actually believe in white supremacy.
Europeans have been returning to normal with businesses, schools, bars and restaurants
re-opening and operating in the normal way.
The Left want us to believe that the Europeans are a superior race. "We cannot return to
normal in America because the US is really like another planet - with a weak, soft, sickly
sub-species of humans."
For The American Left, the return to normal life in Europe is actually a kind of hate crime
- a spiteful flaunting of the privilege and superiority of ethnic Europeans. White
supremacy has given Europeans better immune systems and better general health. [When in
doubt, blame Christopher Columbus?]
How are America's marxist ruling class able to carry on this information-control operation
- to maintain the climate of fear by suppressing news from Europe and the rest of the
outside world??
It's very very scary - much scarier than any virus.
And their propaganda is costing tens of thousands of lives - and not just from
psychological and addiction problems caused by economic and social breakdown.
They have managed to convince a lot of people that hydroxychloroquine is not only
ineffective but actually dangerous!! This is a drug that has been in widespread use for
seven decades!!! It is being used all over the place - greatly depressing hospitalisation
and death rates when used in the early stages of the virus. The Left's hysterical attacks
against this therapy (Apparently it is a counter-revolutionary drug - not approved by The
Party.), are not just scary, they are a crime against humanity.
The middle eastern war in Afghanistan & our soldiers: After millions or billions of
American tax dollars spent to help build up this poor nation what has changed? NADA, too
many American soldiers and other military personal have died for what, zero changes in a
place where Islam rules supreme and nothing has changed from the 14th century way of life.
Way past time to get out and let these followers of Islam kill each other over their ideals
on how they interpret the Koran.( Shia verse Shite Muslim wage war on each other due to
different interpretations of the Koran)
The President is picking the wrong fight. He should veto the NDAA not over
Confederate-named bases but over these pro-interventionist amendments, If congress wants to
override him, let them defend such measures. Ending foreign wars was what helped elect
Ptes. Trump in 2016 & it could go a long way toward re-electing him this fall.
Mr. Ellis: House Democrats worked with Liz Cheney (R-WY) on an amendment putting several
conditions on the administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, requiring the White House
to certify at several stages that further reductions wouldn't jeopardize counterterrorism
or national security.
And that means they're not putting America First? According to the article cited, "But
military officials have insisted any further drawdown will be based on conditions on the
ground that are not yet met, even as Trump pushes for a speedy withdrawal." Trump has shown
his incompetence over a broad swath of policies. Why shouldn't the House and if they had
the stomach for it, the Senate, ask him to justify what he's doing. Is he doing what's best
for America or trying to win an election? If his administration can't justify what they're
doing, it's simply another sign of their incompetence.
House Democrats worked with Liz Cheney (R-WY) on an amendment putting several
conditions on the administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, requiring the White House
to certify at several stages that further reductions wouldn't jeopardize counterterrorism
or national security.
Well isn't that special?
Republican and Democrat wings of the war party conspiring amongst themselves to
willingly sacrifice American sons/daughters up on the bloody altar of forever war in
support of their stillborn/bankrupt ideologies.
These worthless poser-swine in congress are a national disgrace.
It would be nice if one of the poser-swine in congress could raise their snout long
enough to articulate what our national security interests in Afghanistan are (hint: there
are no US national security interests at stake in Afghanistan).
In order to prevent the unwarranted accumulation of power/influence in the pigsty known
as Washington DC Americans need to demand fixed term limits for congressional poser-swine
wallowing snout to snout at the public trough. One term of 6 years for senators (appointed
by state legislatures - no general election - old fashioned hockey) and three terms of 2
years for representatives via general election.
Disgraceful poser-swine such as Cheney and Pelosi (etal) are working for themselves and
their benefactors narrow interests - nation be damned.
More willful blindness by the media on spying by Obama administration
By Jonathan Turley
July 27, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - The Washington
press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful
blindness, or deliberately ignoring the facts, following the release of yet another
declassified document which directly refutes prior statements about the investigation into
Russia collusion. The document shows that FBI officials used a national security briefing of
then candidate Donald
Trump and his top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name
for the Russia investigation.
It is astonishing that the media refuses to see what is one of the biggest stories in
decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false
evidence. The media covered Obama administration officials ridiculing the suggestions of spying
on the Trump campaign and of improper conduct with the Russia investigation. When Attorney
General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was
lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The
mocking "wow" response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.
The new document shows that, in summer 2016, FBI agent Joe Pientka briefed Trump campaign
advisers Michael Flynn and Chris Christie over national security issues, standard practice
ahead of the election. It had a discussion of Russian interference. But this was different. The
document detailing the questions asked by Trump and his aides and their reactions was filed
several days after that meeting under Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, the FBI
investigation of Flynn. The two FBI officials listed who approved the report are Kevin
Clinesmith and Peter Strzok.
No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media
Clinesmith is the former FBI lawyer responsible for the FISA surveillance conducted on
members of the Trump campaign. He opposed Trump and sent an email after the election declaring
"viva the resistance." He is now under review for possible criminal charges for altering a FISA
court filing. The FBI used Trump adviser Carter Page as the basis for the original FISA
application, due to his contacts with Russians. After that surveillance was approved, however,
federal officials discredited the collusion allegations and noted that Page was a CIA asset.
Clinesmith had allegedly changed the information to state that Page was not working for the
CIA.
Strzok is the FBI agent whose violation of FBI rules led Justice Department officials to
refer him for possible criminal charges. Strzok did not hide his intense loathing of Trump and
famously referenced an "insurance policy" if Trump were to win the election. After FBI
officials concluded there was no evidence of any crime by Flynn at the end of 2016, Strzok
prevented the closing of the investigation as FBI officials searched for any crime that might
be used to charge the incoming national security adviser.
Documents show Comey briefed President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on the
investigation shortly before the inauguration of Trump. When Comey admitted the communications
between Flynn and Russian officials appeared legitimate, Biden reportedly suggested using the
Logan Act, a law widely seen as unconstitutional and never been used to successfully convict a
single person, as an alternative charge against Flynn. The memo contradicts eventual claims by
Biden that he did not know about the Flynn investigation. Let us detail some proven but mostly
unseen facts.
First, the Russia collusion allegations were based in large part on the dossier funded by
the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign repeatedly
denied paying for the dossier until after the election, when it was confronted with irrefutable
evidence that the money had been buried among legal expenditures. As New York Times reporter
Maggie Haberman wrote, "Folks involved in funding this lied about it and with sanctimony for a
year."
Second, FBI agents had warned that dossier author Christopher Steele may have been used by
Russian intelligence to plant false information to disrupt the election. His source for the
most serious allegations claims that Steele misrepresented what he had said and that it was
little more than rumors that were recast by Steele as reliable intelligence.
Third, the Obama administration had been told that the basis for the FISA application was
dubious and likely false. Yet it continued the investigation, and then someone leaked its
existence to the media. Another declassified document shows that, after the New York Times ran
a leaked story on the investigation, even Strzok had balked at the account as misleading and
inaccurate. His early 2017 memo affirmed that there was no evidence of any individuals in
contact with Russians. This information came as the collusion stories were turning into a
frenzy that would last years.
Fourth, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and inspectors general found no
evidence of collusion or knowing contact between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. What
inspectors general did find were false statements or possible criminal conduct by Comey and
others. While unable to say it was the reason for their decisions, they also found statements
of animus against Trump and his campaign by the FBI officials who were leading the
investigation. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified he never would have
approved renewal of the FISA surveillance and encouraged further investigation into such
bias.
Finally, Obama and Biden were aware of the investigation, as were the administration
officials who publicly ridiculed Trump when he said there was spying on his campaign. Others,
like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, declared they had evidence of collusion
but never produced it. Countless reporters, columnists, and analysts still continue to deride,
as writer Max Boot said it, the spinning of "absurd conspiracy theories" about how the FBI
"supposedly spied on the Trump campaign."
Willful blindness has its advantages. The media covered the original leak and the collusion
narrative, despite mounting evidence that it was false. They filled hours of cable news shows
and pages of print with a collusion story discredited by the FBI. Virtually none of these
journalists or experts have acknowledged that the collusion leaks were proven false, let alone
pursue the troubling implications of national security powers being used to target the
political opponents of an administration. But in Washington, success often depends not on what
you see but what you can unsee.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington
University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley . - "
Source " -
The Deep state coup attempt (sometimes called the soft coup or the
"insurance policy" ) was an effort by high-level Obama administration intelligence
community officials and holdovers to sabotage the agenda of President Donald Trump , remove him
from power, and hide the illegal actions of the Obama administration.
Tashina "Tash" Gauhar, also goes by Tanisha Guahar, is the Deputy Assistant Attorney General
(DAAG) in the Department of Justice National Security
Division (NSD). Gauhar is a FISA
lawyer. Tash was at the DOJ since 2001, and she formerly served as assistant counsel and chief of
operations in what was then called the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. She worked for
DAG Rosenstein as she did for DAG Sally Yates. Tash Gauhar was the DAG's executor and enforcer
for national security. Tashina Gauhar was/is best friends with Lisa Page . Tashina is reported to have attempted
to get access to highly compartmentalized NSA information, and lied about being an appropriately
cleared recipient.
Guahar is said to have been removed from her position in charge of FISA applications
immediately after IG Michael Horowitz submitted his first draft
report to Attorney General Bill
Barr for classification review. Gauhar now reportedly works for Boeing . [1]
She is the DOJ/FBI lawyer at the heart of the Clinton-email investigation; the DOJ/FBI lawyer
hired by Eric Holder at
his firm and later at the DOJ; the DOJ/FBI lawyer who was transferred to the Clinton probe; the
DOJ/FBI lawyer at the epicenter of the Weiner laptop issues, the only one from MYE who spoke to
New York; the DOJ/FBI lawyer who constructs the FISA applications on behalf of Main Justice; .
just happens to be the same DOJ/FBI lawyer recommending to AG Jeff Sessions that he recuse
himself. Tashina Gauhar -
Conservapedia
Keep hearing these things about Tashina "Tash" Gauhar, head of DoJ National Security
Division seems to always be involved with all these things -- Clinton Emails, DNC/Weiner,
Sessions recusal, Mueller liaison at DoJ, FISA warrants.
27 JULY 2020The Curious Silence of the Traitors by Larry C Johnson
Remember when John O. Brennan--Obama's CIA Director--and disgraced FBI agent, Peter Strzok,
were regularly spewing anti-Trump diatribes on Twitter? Well, Strzok went silent on 11 July
2020 and Brennan did the same a week later (18 July 2020). I do not think that is a
coincidence.
I have now heard from three separate sources that John Durham will have plea deals and/or
indictments before 1 September 2020. Two of the first heads to roll likely will be lying lawyer
Kevin Clinesmith , who deliberately withheld exculpatory from a FISA application to spy on
Carter Page, and lover boy, Peter Strzok.
And then there is the retarded fool, John Brennan, who fancies himself as the Mozart of the
Intelligence Community. Sorry John, you do not even qualify to clean Salieri's toliet. Until 9
days ago, John was a regular tweeter hurling foul invectives at Donald Trump.
Here are two examples of their July 11 screeds:
Trump's commutation of Stone apparently pushed them over the edge. Boo hoo. But since then
it has been crickets from these two chowderheads. Has the past caught up with them? At least in
Strzok's case he has retained legal representation. No indicator yet about Brennan. A competent
lawyer would understand that tweets, especially those attacking the Trump Administration, is a
potentially dangerous, self-incriminating activity.
More than two weeks of silence from Strzok and one week from Brennan does not appear to be a
mere instance of having nothing to say. Lack of substance has not prevented these two buffoons
from shooting their mouths off in the past. Is the day of reckoning nigh?
I sure hope so, but I'm not optimistic.
The swamp will not go willingly and Barr, for all his comments about "justice", is still a
member in good standing.
Look at how the FBI is still out of control, hiding and shredding documents and the "career"
lawyers are still operating the DOJ as an arm of the Democrat party.
How long did Martha Stewart end up in the slammer? How much time did the Varsity Blues
parents get in the Big House? People still do go to jail in this country for messing around
with the facts.
Are Brennan and Strozk immune after trying to take down a sitting President, but trying to
get your stupid kid into USC by cheating gets a prolonged close encounter with Bubba?
Surely, we don't have two systems of justice. One for government employees and one for the
rest of us. I gather one does not "plea bargain" unless there is a case. Though Gen Flynn can
still beg to differ with that presumption. Surely we are not intro framing suspects, even
though their possible charge was framing the President.
Does the DOJ have clean hands at last, on Russiagate. And will a possible plea bargain
finally lead to loss of their security clearances? And pensions. Did Clapper flip.
Why was the "essential question" to only investigate the Trump campaign.
Facts in evidence clearly show Clinton was the one getting the Russians to interfere in
the 2016 campaign. How is her Twitter account doing right now. Did she too drop into this
sudden cone of silence?
Keep hearing these things about Tashina "Tash" Gauhar, head of DoJ National Security
Division seems to always be involved with all these things -- Clinton Emails, DNC/Weiner,
Sessions recusal, Mueller liaison at DoJ, FISA warrants.
Thanks for the write up Larry. The sounds of silence are deafening. The silence of riots
apparently being news, until this instant, when Congressman Nadler was forced to see five
minutes of it via video in the hearing room on Congress, to which he chastised the ranking
member for not giving him 48 hours warning that truth would be shown. I wonder what antifa's
masters have in store for us for the rest of the week, given their narrative is losing them
voter support.
Strzok has a book coming out, "Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald
J. Trump". I'd rather see him sweating bullets before the Sep 8 release. Thanks Larry!
Once behind bars, Strzok can't profit from his crime so this must be a frantic
ghost-written doozie. And all Russia, Russia, Russia again. Talk about an issue that
generates zero traction.
I think we can all write the plot upfront (OrangemanBad), upon with he will hang the most
gauzy of facts Too bad he could not get Team Mueller to agree with him when it counted.
I mourn the trees sacrificed to his tawdry cause. Maintaining a wife and mistress at the
same time however, does add up.
Turkey is currently involved in quite a few international military conflicts -- both against
its own neighbors such as Greece, Armenia, Iraq, Syria and Cyprus, and against other nations
such as Libya and Yemen. These actions by Turkey suggest that Turkey's foreign policy is
increasingly destabilizing not only several nations, but the region as well.
In addition, the Erdogan regime has been militarily targeting Syria and Iraq, sending its
Syrian mercenaries to Libya to seize Libyan oil and continuing, as usual, to bully Greece.
Turkey's regime is also now provoking ongoing violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.398.1_en.html#goog_1565758762 NOW PLAYING
Erdogan leads first Muslim prayer after Hagia Sophia mosque reconversion
Istanbul's Hagia Sophia reconversion to a mosque, 'provocation to civilised world', Greece
says
Turkish top court revokes Hagia Sophia's museum status, 'tourists should still be allowed
in'
Erdogan: Interference over Hagia Sophia 'direct attack on our sovereignty'
Libya's GNA says Egypt's warning on Sirte offensive a 'declaration of war'
Erdogan says 'agreements' reached with Trump on Libya
What Turkish Election Results Mean for the Lira
Erdogan Sparks Democracy Concerns in Push for Istanbul Vote Rerun
Since July 12, Azerbaijan has launched a series of cross-border attacks against Armenia's
northern Tavush region in skirmishes that have resulted
in the deaths of at least four Armenian soldiers and 12 Azerbaijani ones. After Azerbaijan
threatened to launch missile attacks on Armenia's Metsamor nuclear plant on July 16, Turkey
offered military assistance to Azerbaijan.
"Our armed unmanned aerial vehicles, ammunition and missiles with our experience, technology
and capabilities are at Azerbaijan's service,"
said İsmail Demir, the head of Presidency of Defense Industries, an affiliate of the
Turkish Presidency.
One of Turkey's main targets also seems to be Greece. The Turkish military is targeting
Greek territorial waters yet again. The Greek newspaper Kathimerini
reported :
"There have been concerns over a possible Turkish intervention in the East Med in a bid to
prevent an agreement on the delineation of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) between Greece
and Egypt which is currently being discussed between officials of the two countries."
Turkey's choice of names for its gas exploration ships are also a giveaway. The name of the
main ship that Turkey is using for seismic "surveys" of the Greek continental shelf is
Oruç Reis , (1474-1518), an admiral of the Ottoman Empire who often raided the
coasts of Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean that were still controlled by Christian
powers. Other exploration and drilling vessels Turkey uses or is planning to use in Greece's
territorial waters are named after Ottoman sultans who targeted Cyprus and Greece in bloody
military invasions. These include the drilling ship
Fatih "the conqueror" or Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who invaded Constantinople in 1453; the
drilling ship
Yavuz , "the resolute", or Sultan Selim I, who headed the Ottoman Empire during the
invasion of Cyprus in 1571; and
Kanuni , "the lawgiver" or Sultan Suleiman, who invaded parts of eastern Europe as well as
the Greek island of Rhodes.
Turkey's move in the Eastern Mediterranean came in early July, shortly after the country had
turned Hagia Sophia, once the world's greatest Greek Cathedral, into a mosque. Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then
linked Hagia Sophia's conversion to a pledge to "liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque" in
Jerusalem.
On July 21, the tensions arose again following Turkey's announcement that it plans to
conduct seismic research in parts of the Greek continental shelf in an area of sea between
Cyprus and Crete in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
"Turkey's plan is seen in Athens as a dangerous escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean,
prompting Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to warn that European Union sanctions could follow
if Ankara continues to challenge Greek sovereignty," Kathimerini
reported on July 21.
Here is a short list of other countries where Turkey is also militarily involved:
In Libya , Turkey has been increasingly involved in the country's civil war. Associated
Press reported on July 18:
"Turkey sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Syrian fighters to Libya over the first three
months of the year, the U.S. Defense Department's inspector general concluded in a new
report, its first to detail Turkish deployments that helped change the course of Libya's
war.
"The report comes as the conflict in oil-rich Libya has escalated into a regional proxy
war fueled by foreign powers pouring weapons and mercenaries into the country."
Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when an armed revolt during the "Arab Spring" led to
the ouster and murder of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Political power in the country, the current
population of which is around 6.5 million, has been split
between two rival governments. The UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), has been led
by Prime Minister Fayez al Sarraj. Its rival, the Libyan National Army (LNA), has been led by
Libyan military officer, Khalifa Haftar.
Backed by Turkey, the GNA
said on July 18 that it would recapture Sirte, a gateway to Libya's main oil terminals, as
well as an LNA airbase at Jufra.
Egypt, which backs the LNA,
announced , however, that if the GNA and Turkish forces tried to seize Sirte, it would send
troops into Libya. On July 20, the Egyptian parliament
gave approval to a possible deployment of troops beyond its borders "to defend Egyptian
national security against criminal armed militias and foreign terrorist elements."
Yemen is another country on which Turkey has apparently set its sights. In a recent video ,
Turkey-backed Syrian mercenaries fighting on behalf of the GNA in Libya, and aided by local
Islamist groups, are seen saying, "We are just getting started. The target is going to be
Gaza." They also state that they want to take on Egyptian President Sisi and to go to
Yemen.
"Turkey's growing presence in Yemen," The Arab Weekly reported
on May 9, "especially in the restive southern region, is fuelling concern across the region
over security in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al-Mandeb.
"These concerns are further heightened by reports indicating that Turkey's agenda in Yemen
is being financed and supported by Qatar via some Yemeni political and tribal figures
affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood."
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In Syria , Turkey-backed jihadists continue occupying the northern parts of the country. On
July 21, Erdogan
announced that Turkey's military presence in Syria would continue. "Nowadays they are
holding an election, a so-called election," Erdogan said of a parliamentary election on July 19
in Syria's government-controlled regions, after nearly a decade of civil war. "Until the Syrian
people are free, peaceful and safe, we will remain in this country."
Additionally, Turkey's incursion into the Syrian city of Afrin, created a particularly grim
situation for the local Yazidi population:
"As a result of the Turkish incursion to Afrin," the Yazda organization
reported on May 29, "thousands of Yazidis have fled from 22 villages they inhabited prior
to the conflict into other parts of Syria, or have migrated to Lebanon, Europe, or the
Kurdistan Region of Iraq... "
"Due to their religious identity, Yazidis in Afrin are suffering from targeted harassment
and persecution by Turkish-backed militant groups. Crimes committed against Yazidis include
forced conversion to Islam, rape of women and girls, humiliation and torture, arbitrary
incarceration, and forced displacement. The United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2020 annual report confirmed that Yazidis and Christians
face persecution and marginalization in Afrin.
"Additionally, nearly 80 percent of Yazidi religious sites in Syria have been looted,
desecrated, or destroyed, and Yazidi cemeteries have been defiled and bulldozed."
In Iraq , Turkey has been carrying out military operations for years. The last one was
started in mid-June. Turkey's Defense Ministry
announced on June 17 that the country had "launched a military operation against the PKK"
(Kurdistan Workers' Party) in northern Iraq after carrying out a series of airstrikes. Turkey
has named its assaults "Operation Claw-Eagle" and "Operation Claw-Tiger".
The Yazidi, Assyrian
Christian and Kurdish
civilians have been terrorized by the bombings. At least five civilians have been killed in
the air raids, according to
media reports . Human Rights Watch has also issued a
report , noting that a Turkish airstrike in Iraq "disregards civilian loss."
Given Turkey's military aggression in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Armenia, among others, and its
continued occupation of northern Cyprus, further aggression, especially against Greece, would
not be unrealistic. Turkey's desire to invade Greece is not exactly a secret. Since at least
2018, both the Turkish government and opposition parties have openly been calling
for capturing the Greek islands in the Aegean, which they falsely claim belong to
Turkey.
If such an attack took place, would the West abandon Greece?
Gaius Konstantine , 10 hours ago
If such an attack took place, it will get real messy, real fast. The Turkish military is
only partially adept at fighting irregular forces that lack heavy weaponry while Turkey has
absolute control of the sky. Even then, the recent performance of Turkish forces has been
lacklustre for "the 2nd largest Army in NATO".
Turkey should understand that a fight with Greece will mean that the advantages she
enjoyed in her recent adventures will not be there. Nor should Turkey look to the past and
expect an easy victory, the Greek Army will not be marching deep into Anatolia this time,
(which was the wrong type of war for Greece).
So what happens if they actually take it to war?
The larger Greek islands are well defended, they won't be taken, but defending the smaller
ones is hard and Turkey will probably grab some of those. The Greeks, who have absolute
control and dominance in the Aegean will do several things. Turkish naval and air bases along
the Aegean coastline will be attacked as will the bosphorus bridges, (those bridges WILL go
down). The Greek army, which is positioned well, will blitz into eastern Thrace and stop
outside Istanbul where they will dig in and shell the city, thereby causing the civilians to
flee and clogging up the tunnels to restrict military re-enforcement.
That's Greece acting alone, a position will be achieved where any captured islands will be
traded for eastern Thrace. Should the French intervene, (even if it's just air and naval
forces), it gets a lot more interesting.
The mighty Turkish fleet was just met by the entire Greek navy in the latest stand-off, it
was enough to cause Turkey to reconsider her options. There will be no Ottoman empire 2.0
OliverAnd , 9 hours ago
The Greeks need their navy for surgically precise attacks against Turkey's navy. Every
island, especially the large ones are unsinkable aircraft carriers. No one has mentioned in
any article that Turkey's navy is functioning with less than minimum required personnel. No
one has mentioned that their air force is flying with Pakistani pilots. The only way Turks
will land on Greek uninhabited islands is only if they are ship wrecked and that for a very
very short period of time. Turkey's population is composed of 25% Kurds... that will also be
very interesting to see once they awaken from their hibernation and realize their great and
holy goal of Kurdistan. Egypt will not waste the opportunity to join in to devastate whatever
Turkish navy remains. Serbian patriots will not allow the opportunity to go to waste and will
attack Kosovo and indirectly Albania composed primarily of Turkish descendants... realize the
coverage lately of how the US did wrong for supporting these degenerate Muslim
Albanians.
I have no doubt Greeks will make it to Aghia Sophia but will not pass Bosporus. The result
will be a Treaty that is a hybrid of the Treaty of Lausanne and the Treaty of Sevron. If the
Albanians decide to support the Turks by attacking Greeks in the North and in Northern
Epeirus they should expect annexation of Northern Epeirus to Greece. Erdogan bases his
bullying on Trump's incompetences and false friendship. This is why America is non existent
in any of these regions. If Trump wins the election it will be a long war and very
destabilized for the region. If Trump loses the war will be much much quicker. The outcome
will remain the same. The Russians will not allow Turkey to dictate in the area. Israel will
not allow Turkey to dictate in the area. Egypt will not allow Turkey to dictate in the area.
Not even European Union. UK is the questionable.
The West has Turkey's back otherwise the Turkish currency the Turkish Lira would have
collapsed by now under attacks from the City of London Freemasonic Talmudic bankers.
Remember what happened to the Russian Rouble when Russia annexed Crimea?
The Fed and the ECB in cahoots with the usual Talmudic interests, are supporting the
Turkish Lira and propping up the Erdogan regime.
There is NO OTHER explanation.
The Turks have NO foreign currency reserves, no net positive euro nor dollar reserves.
Their tourism industry and main hard currency generator has COLLAPSED (hotels are 95 percent
empty). The Turkish central bank has resorted to STEALING Turkish citizens'
dollar-denominated bank accounts via raising Turkish Banks' foreign currency reserve
requirements which the Turkish central bank SPENDS upon receipt to buy TLs and prop up the
Turkish Lira.
This is utter MADNESS and FRAUD and LARCENY.
London-based currency traders would be all over the Turkish Lira and/or Turkish bonds and
stocks by now UNLESS they had been instructed by the Fed and the ECB or the Talmudic bankers
that own and control both, to lay off the Turkish Lira.
Despite the noise on TV or the press,
BY DEFINITION,
Erdogan and the Turks are only doing the bidding of the TRIBE hence Erdogan has the
blessing and the protection of the people ZH censors the name.
BUT
You know how those parasites treat their host and what the inevitable outcome is,
right?
Indeed,
Erdogan and the Turks are being set up to be thrown under the proverbial bus at the
appropriate time.
The Neo-Ottoman Sultan has inadvertently set up his (ill begotten) country for eventual
destruction and partition. The Kurds will get a piece of it. Who knows, maybe even the
Armenians will be able to recover some bits of their ancient homeland.
Greeks in Constantinople? Nothing is impossible thanks to the hubris and chutzpah of
Erdogan who is purported to have "Amish" blood himself.
Know thyself , 5 hours ago
Good for the UK that they have left the EU.
Apart from the Greeks, who would be fighting for their lives and homeland, the only EU
forces capable of acting are the French. German does not have an operative army or navy;
Italy, Spain and Portugal have neglected their armed forces for many years, and the Baltic
and Eastern Nations are unlikely to want to get involved. The Netherlands have very good
forces but not many of them.
MPJones , 7 hours ago
We can live in hope. Erdogan certainly seems to need external enemies to hold the country
together. Let us also hope that Erdogan's adventurism finally wakes up Europe to the reality
of the ongoing Muslim invasion so that the necessary Muslim repatriation can get going
without the bloodshed which Islam's current strategy in Europe will otherwise inevitably lead
to.
Know thyself , 5 hours ago
The Turkish army is a conscript army. They will need to be whipped up with religious
fervour to perform. Otherwise they will look after their own skins.
But remember that the Turks put up a good defence in the Dardanelles in the First World
War.
HorseBuggy , 9 hours ago
What do you expect? He killed Russian fighter pilots and he survived, this empowers
terrorists like him. Those pilots were the only ones at that time fighting ISIS. May they
RIP.
Max.Power , 9 hours ago
Turkey is in a "proud" group of failed empires surrounded by nations they severely abused
less than 100 years ago.
Other two are Germany and Japan. Any military aggression from their side will be met with
rage by a coalition of nations.
US position will be irrelevant at this point, because local historical grievances will
overweight anything else.
monty42 , 10 hours ago
"Libya has been in turmoil since 2011, when an armed revolt during the "Arab Spring" led
to the ouster and murder of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Political power in the country..."
Kinda gave yourself away there. The coordinated assault on Libya by the US, Britain,
France, and their Al-CiA-da allies on the ground resulted in the torture, sodomizing, and
murder of Gaddafi, as well as his son and grandchildren killed in bombings by the US.
Also, let's not forget that Turkey is still in NATO, and their actions in Syria were
alongside the US regime and terrorist proxies labeled "moderate rebels". The same terrorists
originally used in Libya, then shipped to destroy Syria, now flown back to Libya. The attempt
to paint all of those things as Turkey's actions alone is not honest.
When Turkey isn't in NATO anymore, let me know.
TheZeitgeist , 10 hours ago
Don't forget that Hiftar guy Turks are fighting in Libya was a CIA toadie living in
Virginia for a decade before they gave him his "chance" to among other things become a client
of the Russians apparently. Flustercluck of the 1st order everywhere one looks.
monty42 , 10 hours ago
Then they put on this whole production where it's the CIA guy or the terrorist puppet
regime they installed, so that the rulers win regardless of the outcome. The victims are
those caught up in their sick game.
GalustGulbenkyan , 9 hours ago
Turkish population has been recently getting ****** due to the economic contractions and
devaluation of the Lira. Once Turkey starts fighting against a real army the Turks will
realize that they are going to be ****** by larger dildos. In 1990's they sent thousands of
volunteers to Nagorno Karabagh to fight against irregular Armenian forces and we know how
that ended for them. Greeks and Egyptians are not the Kurds. Erdogan is a lot of hot air and
empty threats. You can't win wars with Modern drones which even Armenians have learned how to
jam and shoot down with old 1970's soviet tech.
Guentzburgh , 5 hours ago
Greece should be aligned with Russia, EU and USA are a bad choice that Greece will
regret.
Greece needs to pivot towards Russia which will open huge opportunities for both
countries
KoalaWalla , 6 hours ago
Greeks are bitter and prideful - they would not only defend themselves if attacked but
would counter attack to reclaim land they've lost. But, I don't know that Erdogan is clever
enough to realize this.
60s Man , 9 hours ago
Turkey is America's Mini Me.
currency , 3 hours ago
Erdogan is in Trouble at home declining economy and his radical conservative/Thug type
policies. Turks are moving away from him except the hard core radicals and conservatives. He
and his family are Corrupt - they rule with threats and use of THUGS. Sense his constant wars
may be over stretched Time for a Turkish Spring.
Time for US, Nato and etc. to say goodbye to this THUG
OrazioGentile , 7 hours ago
Turkey seems to be on a warpath to imploding from within. Erdogan looks like a desperate
despot with a failing economy, failing political clout, and failing modernization of his
Country. Like any despot, he has to rally the troops or he will literally be a dead man
walking.
HorseBuggy , 9 hours ago
The world fears loud obnoxious tyrants and Erdogan is the loudest tyrant since Hitler.
Remember how countries pandered to Hitler early on? Same thing is happening with Erdogan.
This terrorist will do a lot more damage than he has already before the world wakes
up.
By the time Hitler was done, 70 million people were dead, what will Erdogan cause?
OliverAnd , 9 hours ago
Turkey is not Germany. Not by far. Erdogan may be a bigger lunatic than Hitler, but Turkey
is not Germany of the 30's. Without military equipment/parts from Germany, Italy, Spain,
France, USA, and UK he cannot even build a nail. Economies are very integrated; he will be
disposed of very very quickly. He has been warned. He is running out of lives.
NewNeo , 9 hours ago
You should research a lot more. Turkey is a lot more power thank Nazi Germany of the
1930's. Turkey currently have brand new US made equipment. It even houses the nuclear arsenal
of NATO.
You should probably look at information from stratfor and George Friedman to give you a
better understanding.
The failed coupe a few years ago was because the lunatic had gone off the reservation and
was seen as a threat to the region. Obviously the bankers thought it in their benefit to keep
him going and tipped him off.
OliverAnd , 8 hours ago
Clearly the lockdown has hindered your already illiteracy. Turkey has modern US equipment.
Germany did not need US equipment. They made their own equipment; in fact both the US and
USSR used Grrman old tech to develop future tech.
The coup was designed by Erdogan to bring himself to full power. When this is all done he
will be responsible for millions of Turkish lives; after all he is not a Turk but a Muslim
Pontian.
"... By Dr. Karin Kneissl , who works as an energy analyst and book author. She served as the Austrian minister of foreign affairs between 2017-2019. She is currently writing her book 'Die Mobilitätswende' (Mobility in transition), to be published this summer. ..."
"... "humanitarian corridor" ..."
"... "good opposition" ..."
"... "humanitarian war," ..."
"... "worst mistake." ..."
"... "geopolitical commission." ..."
"... "community of the good ones" ..."
"... "Friends of Libya," ..."
"... "good opposition" ..."
"... "exclusive economic zone" ..."
"... "other actors" ..."
"... "mare nostrum" ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
By
Dr.
Karin Kneissl
, who works as an energy analyst and book author. She served as the Austrian minister of foreign affairs
between 2017-2019. She is currently writing her book 'Die Mobilitätswende' (Mobility in transition), to be published this
summer.
A confrontation between the two NATO states France and Turkey continues to trouble the Mediterranean region; Egyptian forces
are mobilizing. And many other military players are continuing operations there.
In March 2011, during a hectic weekend, the French delegation to the UN
Security Council managed to convince all other member States of the Council to support Resolution 1973. It was all about a
"humanitarian
corridor"
for Benghazi, which was considered the
"good opposition"
by the
government of Nicolas Sarkozy. One of his whisperers was the controversial philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who supported a
French intervention. Levy, fond of the
"humanitarian war,"
found a congenial
partner in Sarkozy.
France was at root of crisis
Muammar Gaddafi had been received generously with all his tents in the park of
the Elysée, but suddenly he was coined the bad guy. The same had happened to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It was not the Arab
dictator who had changed; it was his usefulness to his allies. The Libyans had been distributing huge amounts of money in
Europe, in particular in Rome and Paris at various levels. In certain cases they knew too much. Plus, the Libyans had been
protecting the southern border of the Mediterranean for the European Union.
So, the French started the war in 2011, took the British on board, which made
the entire adventure look a bit like a replay of the Suez intervention of 1956, the official end of European colonial
interventions. A humanitarian intervention changed into regime change on day two, which was March 20, 2011. Various UN
Security Council members felt trapped by the French.
The US was asked to help, with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
many other advisers in favor of joining that war. President Obama, however, was reluctant but, in the end, he gave in. In one
of his last interviews while still in the White House, Obama stated that the aftermath of the war in Libya was his
"worst
mistake."
Libya ever since has mostly remained a dossier in the hands of administrative
officials in Washington, but not on the top presidential agenda anymore. This practice has been slightly shifting in the past
weeks. US President Donald Trump and France's Emmanuel Macron had a phone conversation on how to deescalate the situation
there. Trump also spoke on that very topic with Turkish President Recep T. Erdogan. Paris supports General Haftar in his war
against the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord, which is also supported by the European Union, in theory
The triggering momentum for the current rise in tensions was a naval clash
between French- and Turkish-supported vessels. Both nations are NATO members, and an internal alliance investigation is
underway. But France decided to pull out of the NATO naval operation that enforces the Libya arms embargo, set up during the
high-level Berlin conference on Libya in mid-January 2020. Without the French vessels it will be even more toothless than its
critics already deem it. This very initiative on Libya was the first test for the new European commission headed by Ursula von
der Leyen and claiming to be a
"geopolitical commission."
The EU strives to speak
the language of power but keeps failing in Libya, where two members, namely Italy and France, are pursuing very different
goals. Rome is anxious about migration while Paris cares more about the terrorist threat. But both have an interest in
commodities.
When Gaddafi was reintegrated in the
"community
of the good ones"
in early 2004 after a curious British legal twisting on the Lockerbie attack of December 1988, a
bonanza for oil and gas concessions started. The Italian energy company ENI and BP were among the first to have a big foot in
the door. I studied some of those contracts and asked myself why companies were ready to accept such terms. The answer was
maybe in the then rise in the oil price of oil and the proximity of Libya to the European market.
Interestingly, in September 2011, the very day of the opening ceremony of the
Paris conference dubbed
"Friends of Libya,"
a secret oil deal for the French
company Total was published by the French daily Libération. The
"good opposition"
had
promised the French an interesting range of oil concessions. Oil production continuously fell with the rise of the war,
attracting sponsors, militias and smugglers from all horizons. The situation in Libya has since been called 'somalization,'
but it would become even worse, since many more regional powers got involved in Libya than ever was the case in hunger-ridden
Somalia.
In exchange for its military assistance, Turkey recently gained access to
exploration fields off Libya's shores. Ankara had identified an
"exclusive economic
zone"
with the government in Tripoli, which disregards the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Actually, Israel made the
same bilateral demarcation with Cyprus about ten years ago, when Noble Energy started its delineation of blocs in the Levant
Basin. So Turkey is infringing on Greek and Cypriot territorial waters, while President Macron keeps reminding his EU
colleagues of the
"other actors"
in the Mediterranean Sea. Alas, it is nobody's
"mare
nostrum"
as it was 2,000 years ago in the Roman era. In principle, all states which have ratified the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea should simply comply with their legal obligations.
The crucial question remains: who has which leverage to de-escalate? Is it the
US President, who seemingly has acted more wisely on certain issues in recent times? Or will Russian and Turkish diplomacy be
able to negotiate and implement a truce? The tightrope-walk diplomacy between these last two countries is a most interesting
example of classical diplomacy: interest-based and focused; able to conduct hard-core relations even in times of direct
military confrontation and assassinations (remember the Russian Ambassador Karlov, shot by his Turkish bodyguard in Ankara in
December 2016?).
Meanwhile, yet another actor could move in to complicate everything even more.
On July 20, the Egyptian parliament voted unanimously for the deployment of the national army outside its borders, thereby
taking the risk of direct confrontation with Turkey in Libya. Egyptian troops would be mobilized in support of the eastern
forces of General Khalifa Haftar. Furthermore, Cairo would thereby compete even more obviously with Algeria, spending a
fortune on military control of its border with Libya. Algeria in the past could rely on US support in the region, but with the
gradual decline in US engagement in that part of the world, the country faces a fairly existential crisis.
There are currently two powers, among those involved in Libya, that can still
contain the next stage of a decade of proxy wars started by a French philosopher and various EU oil interests: Russia and the
USA.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those
of RT.
Quizblorg
48 minutes ago
Does anything here make sense? No, because France this, Italy that is not how the world is run. The parties
involved here go far beyond countries. Also no mention of Saudi-Arabia/Israel. Who engineered the "Arab
Spring"?
"... The reality is that, in the summer of 2020, America faces two deadly viruses. The first is Covid-19. With hard work and some luck, scientists may be able to mass-produce an effective vaccine for it, perhaps by as early as next spring . In the meantime, scientists do have a sense of how to control it, contain it, even neutralize it, as countries from South Korea and New Zealand to Denmark have shown, even if some Americans, encouraged by our president, insist on throwing all caution to the winds in the name of living free. The second virus, however, could prove even more difficult to control, contain, and neutralize: forever war, a pandemic that U.S. military forces, with their global strike missions, continue to spread across the globe. ..."
"... To survive, the human body needs a healthy immune system, so when it goes haywire, becomes wildly inflamed, and ends up attacking and degrading our vital organs, we're in trouble deep. It's a reasonable guess that, in analogous terms, American democracy is already on a ventilator and beginning to feel the effects of multiple organ failure. ..."
"... Unlike a human patient, doctors can't put our democracy into a medically induced coma. But collectively we should be working to suppress our overactive immune system before it kills us. In other words, it's truly time to defund that military machine of ours, as well as the militarized version of the police, and rethink how actual threats can be neutralized without turning every response into an endless war. ..."
...as Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed
out in 1967 during the Vietnam War, the United States remains the world's greatest
purveyor of violence -- and nothing in this century, the one he didn't live to see, has
faintly proved him wrong. Considered another way, Washington should be classified as the
planet's most committed arsonist, regularly setting or fanning the flames of fires globally
from Libya to Iraq, Somalia to Afghanistan, Syria to -- dare I say it -- in some quite
imaginable future Iran, even as our leaders invariably boast of having the world's greatest
firefighters (also known as
the U.S. military ).
Scenarios of perpetual war haunt my thoughts. For a healthy democracy, there should be few
things more unthinkable than never-ending conflict, that steady drip-drip of death and
destruction that drives
militarism , reinforces authoritarianism, and facilitates disaster capitalism .
In 1795, James Madison
warned Americans that war of that sort would presage the slow death of freedom and
representative government. His prediction seems all too relevant in a world in which, year
after year, this country continues to engage in needless wars that have nothing to do with
national defense.
You Wage War Long, You Wage It Wrong
U.S. helicopters on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway (CV-41) during the
evacuation of Saigon, April 1975. (DanMS, Wikimedia Commons)
To cite one example of needless war from the last century, consider America's horrendous
years of fighting in Vietnam and a critical lesson drawn firsthand from that conflict by
reporter Jonathan Schell. "In Vietnam," he noted , "I learned about the capacity of the
human mind to build a model of experience that screens out even very dramatic and obvious
realities." As a young journalist covering the war, Schell saw that the U.S. was losing, even
as its military was destroying startlingly large areas of South Vietnam in the name of saving
it from communism. Yet America's leaders, the " best and brightest "
of the era, almost to a man refused to see that all of what passed for realism in their world,
when it came to that war, was nothing short of a first-class lie.
Why? Because believing is seeing and they desperately wanted to believe that they were the
good guys, as well as the most powerful guys on the planet. America was winning, it practically
went without saying, because it had to be. They were infected by their own version of an
all-American victory culture ,
blinded by a sense of this country's obvious destiny: to be the most exceptional and
exceptionally triumphant nation on this planet.
As it happened, it was far more difficult for grunts on the ground to deny the reality of
what was happening -- that they were fighting and dying in a senseless war. As a result,
especially after the shock of the enemy's Tet Offensive early in 1968, escalating protests
within the military (and among veterans at home) together with massive antiwar demonstrations
finally helped put the brakes on that war. Not before, however, more than 58,000 American
troops died, along with
millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians.
In the end, the war in Indochina was arguably too costly, messy, and futile to continue. But
never underestimate the
military-industrial complex , especially when it comes to editing or denying reality, while
being eternally over-funded for that very reality. It's a trait the complex has shared with
politicians of both parties. Don't forget, for instance, the way President Ronald Reagan
reedited that disastrous conflict into a "
noble cause " in the 1980s. And give him credit! That was no small thing to sell to an
American public that had already lived through such a war. By the way, tell me something about
that Reaganesque moment doesn't sound vaguely familiar almost four decades later when our very
own "
wartime president " long ago
declared victory in the "war" on Covid-19, even as the death toll from that virus
approaches 150,000 in the homeland.
President Donald Trump during briefing on Covid-19 testing capacity May 11, 2020. (White
House, Shealah Craighead)
In the meantime, the military-industrial complex has mastered the long con of the
no-win forever war in a genuinely impressive fashion. Consider the war in Afghanistan. In
2021 it will enter its third decade without an end in sight. Even when President Donald Trump
makes noises
about withdrawing troops from that country, Congress approves an amendment to another massive,
record-setting military budget with broad
bipartisan support that effectively obstructs any efforts to do so (while the Pentagon
continues to bargain Trump down on the
subject).
The Vietnam War, which was destroying the U.S. military, finally ended in an ignominious
withdrawal. Almost two decades later, after the 2001 invasion, the war in Afghanistan can now
be -- the dream of the Vietnam era -- fought in a "limited" fashion, at least from the point of
view of Congress, the Pentagon, and most Americans (who ignore it), even if not the Afghans.
The number of American troops being killed is, at this point, acceptably
low , almost imperceptible in fact (even if not to Americans who have lost loved ones over
there).
More and more, the U.S. military is relying on air power ,
unmanned drones, mercenaries, local militias, paramilitaries, and private contractors.
Minimizing American casualties is an effective way of minimizing negative media coverage here;
so, too, are efforts by the Trump administration to classify nearly everything related to that
war while
denying or downplaying " collateral
damage " -- that is, dead civilians -- from it.
Their efforts boil down to a harsh truth: America just plain
lies about its forever wars, so that it can keep on killing in lands far from home.
When we as Americans refuse to take in the destruction we cause, we come to passively accept
the belief system of the ruling class that what's still bizarrely called "defense" is a "must
have" and that we collectively must spend
significantly more than a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon, the Department of
Homeland Security, and a sprawling network of intelligence agencies, all justified as necessary
defenders of America's freedom. Rarely does the public put much thought into the dangers
inherent in a sprawling "defense" network that increasingly invades and dominates our
lives.
Unmanned MQ-9 Reaper taxis after a mission in Afghanistan, Oct. 1, 2007. (Wikimedia)
Meanwhile, it's clear that low-cost
wars , at least in terms of U.S. troops killed and wounded in action, can essentially be
prolonged indefinitely, even when they never result in anything faintly like victory or fulfill
any faintly useful American goal. The Afghan War remains the case in point. "Progress" is a
concept that only ever fits
the enemy -- the Taliban continues to gain ground -- yet, in these years, figures like
retired general and former CIA Director David Petraeus have continued to call for a "
generational
" commitment of troops and resources there, akin to U.S. support for South Korea.
Who says the Pentagon leadership learned nothing from Vietnam? They learned how to wage
open-ended wars basically forever, which has proved useful indeed when it comes to justifying
and sustaining
epic military budgets and the political authority that goes with them. But here's the
thing: in a democracy, if you wage war long, you wage it wrong. Athens and the historian
Thucydides learned this the hard way in the struggle against Sparta more than two millennia
ago. Why do we insist on forgetting such an obvious lesson?
'We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us'
Sept. 11, 2001: Firefighters battling fire in portion of the Pentagon damaged by attack.
(U.S. Navy/Bob Houlihan)
World War II was arguably the last war Americans truly had to fight. My Uncle Freddie was in
the Army and stationed at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. The country then
came together and won a global conflict (with lots of help) in 44 months, emerging as the
planetary superpower to boot. Now, that superpower is very much on the wane, as Trump
recognized in running successfully as a
declinist candidate for president in 2016. (Make America Great Again !) And yet,
though he ran against this country's forever wars and is now president, we're approaching the
third decade of a war on terror that has yielded little, spread radical Islamist terror outfits
across an expanse of the planet, and still seemingly has no end.
"Great nations do not fight endless wars," Trump
himself claimed only last year. Yet that's exactly what this country has been doing,
regardless of which party ruled the roost in Washington. And here's where, to give him credit,
Trump actually had a certain insight. America is no longer great precisely because of the
endless wars we wage and all the largely hidden but associated costs that go with them,
including the recently much publicized
militarization of the police here at home. Yet, in promising to make America great again,
President Trump has
failed to end those wars, even as he's fed the military-industrial complex with even
greater piles of cash.
There's a twisted logic to all this. As the leading purveyor of violence and terror, with
its leaders committed to fighting Islamist terrorism across the planet until the phenomenon is
vanquished, the U.S. inevitably becomes its own opponent, conducting a perpetual war on itself.
Of course, in the process, Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Somalis, and Yemenis, among other
peoples on this embattled planet of ours, pay big time, but Americans pay, too. (Have you even
noticed that high-speed railroad that's unbuilt
, that dam in increasing
disrepair , those bridges that need fixing, while money continues to
pour into the national security state?) As the cartoon possum Pogo once so classically
said , "We
have met the enemy and he is us."
Early in the Iraq War, General Petraeus asked a question that
was relevant indeed: "Tell me how this [war] ends." The answer, obvious to so many who had
protested in the global streets
over the invasion to come in 2003, was "not well." Today, another answer should be obvious:
never, if the Pentagon and America's political and national security elite have anything to do
with it. In thermodynamics class, I learned that a perpetual motion machine is impossible to
create due to entropy. The Pentagon never took that in and has instead been hard at work
proving that a perpetual military machine is possible until, that is, the empire it feeds off
of collapses and takes us with it.
America's Military Complex as a Cytokine Storm
U.S. Air Force basic military graduation on April 16, 2020, on Joint Base San
Antonio-Lackland, Texas. (U.S. Air Force, Johnny Saldivar)
In the era of Covid-19, as cases and deaths from the pandemic continue to soar in America, it's astonishing that
military spending is also soaring to record
levels despite a medical emergency and a major recession.
The reality is that, in the summer of 2020, America faces two deadly viruses. The first
is Covid-19. With hard work and some luck, scientists may be able to mass-produce an effective
vaccine for it, perhaps by as early as
next spring . In the meantime, scientists do have a sense of how to control it, contain it,
even neutralize it, as countries from South Korea and New Zealand to Denmark have shown, even
if some Americans, encouraged by our president, insist on throwing all caution to the winds in
the name of living free. The second virus, however, could prove even more difficult to control,
contain, and neutralize: forever war, a pandemic that U.S. military forces, with their global
strike missions, continue to spread across the globe.
Sadly, it's a reasonable bet that in the long run, even with Trump as president, America has
a better chance of defeating Covid-19 than the virus of forever war. At least, the first is
generally seen as a serious threat (even
if not by a president blind to anything but his chances for reelection); the second is,
however, still largely seen as evidence of our strength and exceptionalism. Indeed, Americans
tend to imagine "our" military not as a dangerous virus but as a set of benevolent antibodies,
defending us from global evildoers.
When it comes to America's many wars, perhaps there's something to be learned from the way
certain people's immune systems respond to Covid-19. In some cases, the virus sparks an
exaggerated immune response that drives the body into a severe inflammatory state known as a
cytokine storm . That "storm" can lead to multiple organ failure followed by death, yet it
occurs in the cause of defending the body from a viral attack.
In a similar fashion, America's exaggerated response to 19 hijackers on 9/11 and then to
perceived threats around the globe, especially the nebulous threat of terror, has led to an
analogous (if little noticed) cytokine storm in the American system. Military (and
militarized police ) antibodies have been sapping our resources, inflaming our body
politic, and slowly strangling the vital organs of democracy. Left unchecked, this "storm" of
inflammatory militarism
will be the death of democracy in America.
To put this country right, what's needed is not only an effective vaccine for Covid-19 but a
way to control the "antibodies" produced by America's forever wars abroad and, as the years
have gone by, at home -- and the ways they've attacked and inflamed the collective U.S.
political, social, and economic body. Only when we find ways to vaccinate ourselves against the
destructive violence of those wars, whether on foreign streets or our own, can we begin to heal
as a democratic society.
To survive, the human body needs a healthy immune system, so when it goes haywire,
becomes wildly inflamed, and ends up attacking and degrading our vital organs, we're in trouble
deep. It's a reasonable guess that, in analogous terms, American democracy is already on a
ventilator and beginning to feel the effects of multiple organ failure.
Unlike a human patient, doctors can't put our democracy into a medically induced coma.
But collectively we should be working to suppress our overactive immune system before it kills
us. In other words, it's truly time to defund
that military machine of ours, as well as the militarized version of the police, and rethink
how actual threats can be neutralized without turning every response into an endless
war.
So many years later, it's time to think the unthinkable. For the U.S. government that means
-- gasp! -- peace. Such a peace would start with imperial retrenchment (bring our troops
home!), much reduced military (and police) budgets, and complete
withdrawal from Afghanistan and any other place associated with that "generational" war on
terror. The alternative is a cytokine storm that will, in the end, tear us apart from
within.
A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, William J. Astore is
a
TomDispatch regular. His personal blog is " Bracing Views ."
To understand what enables all the absurdity noted, try identifying what made short shrift
of Tulsi Gabbard’s run for the democrat nomination. She clearly was raising the wrong
questions about war, and some one like Biden and Hillary were providing the narratives that
enable what is happening to continue.
evelync , July 27, 2020 at 17:26
Why do we live a different public from private life?
The public – American Dream; American Exceptionalism;
The private – CIA Director approved in spite of overseeing torture; secretive paranoid
cold warriors approved to run CIA. Coups/Wars
– The secretive State Dept and Intelligence agencies adopt policies that serve short
term financial interests of MICIMATT
NOT the long term public interest.
Trump was elected in part because people are sick of endless regime change wars and
reckless financial deregulation and unfair trade.
He made promises (which he lied about) because in spite of his glaring flaws he’s a
clever manipulator of peoples’ feelings and he knows what people worry about.
Aaron , July 27, 2020 at 13:48
The war on terror is an Israeli construct, it’s a perpetual war, an impossible kind
of war for our military to win in any conventional sense, whereby we could then pack up and
go home, which is exactly the way the Zionists want it to be played out. The goal has been to
Balkanize all of the countries that Israel feels threatened by and break them apart into
ethnic statelets, and thereby hugely weakening their overall power.
Not unlike what happened
to the former Yugoslavia. Remember that after the war in Afghanistan started, a person in the
Pentagon told Wesley Clark that we were going to war in 7 Middle East countries, and he said
he asked the person “Why?” and they didn’t give him an answer other than
that was the plan.
Sure, there are always the war profiteers and all that, but the particular
mission that our military is serving in that overall region is a Zionist plan.
The American
people have bought this for the most part because the Zionist mainstream media has
successfully conflated the goals of the state of Israel with our own goals, and that we must
equate any and all things Israeli with “The West”, and so whatever antipathy is
directed at them, we are to construe that they are attacking America also. And not only have
many thousands of American troops been killed, tens of thousands injured, the p.t.s.d. and
suicides will go on, as Petraeus seems to imply, for generations. This is a like a terrible,
persistent sickness.
Will there be a modern day Alexander to cut this Gordian Knot? The
financial, emotional, spiritual, moral toll of this forever war is indeed killing our
democracy.
Former Flynn Deputy K.T. McFarland claims the Durham criminal inquiry into the friggin' in
the riggin' of the "Russia Investigation" and who knew what and when at the FBI and elsewhere
is just about ready to wrap up, and teases that we can expect indictments by the end of the
summer. Solid documentary evidence in the form of meeting notes, email exchanges and the like
has emerged, she says.
The more money a member of Congress accepts from the defense industry, the higher the
probability that they'll vote how the defense industry wants them to vote. (So probably what
you expected.)
... ... ...
If you order the members of Congress based on the amount each of them accepted from the
defense sector (2020 cycle) with their respective votes then break your list down (roughly)
into fourths, you'll get something that looks like this:
Amount member accepts from
defense
industry Likelihood that member lets us down Less than $3,000 70% $3,000-$9,999 77%
$10,000-$29,999 84% More than $30,000 More than 98% Notes
41 House Democrats didn't let us down (in this case)
These 41 received (on average) $7,005.63 in campaign contributions from the defense
industry so far in this election cycle
179 House Democrats did let us down
These 179 received (on average) $30,075.85 in campaign contributions from the defense
industry so far in this election cycle
Adam Smith , Democratic Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has received
$376,650.00 in campaign contributions from the defense industry so far in this election
cycle. (He also named the NDAA after his Republican counterpart.)
There is circumstantial evidence the European Union is systematically sinking boats loaded
with refugees coming from the Libyan route. The MS editorial is correct in calling the
Mediterranean "the graveyard of many people from the Middle East and Africa."
It looks like a continental-wide operation of genocide and silence: the Italian and Greek
Coast Guards do the dirty job with secret blessing from their governments, and their
governments count with the tacit blessing (and silence) from the other EU governments and
their respective MSMs. The Russian and Chinese MSMs do nothing because they can't prove it
(as they don't have access to the local) and are more honest than the Western MSM (they don't
report what they can't know).
I wouldn't be surprised if we were talking, after all of this is done, of about some
100,000 dead drowned in the Mediterranean. After that dead boy in a Turkish beach fiasco,
they took care of perfecting the scheme, so that the Italian and Greek coast guards can
operate deeper into the sea, where the drowned corpses cannot be beached. If true, this would
be the most well covered genocide in modern history, and the first one will full and direct
complying from the "free press".
By a vote of 324-93 ,
the House of Representatives soundly defeated an
amendment to reduce Pentagon authorized spending levels by 10%. The amendment does not
specify what to cut, only that Congress make across-the-board reductions. The amendment to
the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was offered by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI). No
Republicans voted for the amendment. Libertarian Justin Amash supported the amendment.
Earlier, the House defeated an amendment to stop the Pentagon's submission of an unfunded
priorities list. Each year, after the Pentagon's budget request is submitted to Congress, the
military services send a separate "wish list," termed "unfunded priorities." This list
includes requests for programs that the military would like Congress to fund, in case they
decide to add more money to the Pentagon's proposed budget.
This article was written while observing the voting on CSPAN. The House Clerk has not
yet posted the roll-call vote. Additional information will be added to the article when
available.
Move comes as Libya gov't and Turkey demand an end of foreign intervention in support of
commander Khalifa Haftar.
####
I suspect In'Sultin Erd O'Grand is a mole of the garden kind. He goes about digging
one hole for himself after another. If he keeps this up, all the holes will merge in to
one and he will disappear! It would give the West a chance to have someone running Turkey
with a more reliably western perspective though I think it is clear that whatever comes next,
Turkey will not allow itself to be treated as a western annex and pawn.
About the Steele Dossier. From the beginning I was nagged by the question of whether anyone
had seriously dug into its provenance? I mean, the chain of custody is critical in evaluating
evidence, isn't it? But that didn't seem to matter to most conversations about it for the
longest time. The impression was left hanging that Christopher Steele, crackerjack agent, had
got the inside stuff straight from people in or near the Kremlin.
Now we learn that the FBI did interview Steele's main conduit for all those claims --
"Primary Sub-source" -- intensively, for three days, early in the Trump administration. They
just never bothered to release any of their findings to the public, even as the dossier's main
claim -- Trump is a Kremlin agent of long standing, beholden to Putin due to some pee tape
kompromat -- took hold in the American political mind and became an article of faith for some.
Still is.
The FBI notes of that interview were released just a few days ago. And they reveal the
"dossier" had zero original reporting. It was concocted entirely from rumors picked up
second-or-third hand, inventive guesses, drunken conversations with persons of no particular
expertise, pillow talk between the main sub-source and his dependent Russian lady friend, and
fragments of a garbled phone call with a "source" whose identity could not be even
approximately established.
In other words, it's way worse than even I thought. And regular readers of this page know
pretty well what I thought about the likely veracity of the Steele Dossier. That such a
pathetic tissue of speculation, delirium and outright falsehood could capture the American
political imagination and drive debate -- for years! -- is simply astounding.
"Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise
that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on,
Steele's claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the
FBI interviewed Steele's "Primary Subsource" over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017. Notes
taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday
afternoon."
"Getting" Flynn was the key to neutering the danger Trump posed to the deep state, since
General Flynn was the one military advisor to Trump who was knowledgeable and who had
recognized the salient fact that, under Obama, the US was employing the "raghead" element to do
their bidding in Syria and elsewhere.
Without Flynn, Trump, who like many has a tendency to accept the views of credentialled
experts, could be convinced to continue the deep state policy of permanent warfare aided by
jihadist barbarians. Trump's tragedy was that he accepted what appeared to be the inevitable
and allowed Flynn to be taken down.
If not this also about conformism? Social desirability == conformism.
Notable quotes:
"... Mark Twain is credited with introducing into the American vernacular the phrase, "Lies, damned lies and statistics." One of the pervasive damned lies people take for granted is the results of political polls, especially in the Trump era. Most polls show him behind several of the myriad candidates vying to represent Democrats in the 2020 election. But the American Association for Public Opinion Research confirms that "national polls in 2016 tended to under-estimate Trump's support significantly more than Clinton's." ..."
"... Social desirability is a concept first advanced by psychologist Allen L. Edwards in 1953. It advances the idea that when asked about an issue in a social setting, people will always answer in a socially desirable manner whether or not they really believe it. Political polling, whether by telephone or online, is a social setting. Respondents know that there is an audience who are posing the questions and monitoring their response. As a result, despite a respondent's true belief, many will answer polling questions in what may appear to be a more socially desirable way, or not answer at all. ..."
Many conservatives are concerned about polling results regarding conservative issues,
especially about President Trump. For example, the latest CNN poll
found that 51% of voters believe the president should be impeached. How much credence should
conservatives give these polls?
Mark Twain is credited with introducing into the American vernacular the phrase, "Lies,
damned lies and statistics." One of the pervasive damned lies people take for granted is the
results of political polls, especially in the Trump era. Most polls show him behind several of
the myriad candidates vying to represent Democrats in the 2020 election. But the American
Association for Public Opinion Research
confirms that "national polls in 2016 tended to under-estimate Trump's support
significantly more than Clinton's."
We are inundated with the latest polling on President Trump's approval rating and how people
are likely to vote in the 2020 election. Both bode poorly for the president, but he doesn't
believe them and neither should we. As an academic, I ran a research center that conducted
local, state-wide and national public opinion polls and took a year's leave of absence from my
university to work for Lou Harris, founder of the Harris Poll.
Social Desirability
The reason why we shouldn't believe most of the current or future polling results about
President Trump can be summarized in two words: Social Desirability.
Social desirability is a concept first advanced by psychologist Allen L. Edwards in 1953. It
advances the idea that when asked about an issue in a social setting, people will always answer
in a socially desirable manner whether or not they really believe it. Political polling,
whether by telephone or online, is a social setting. Respondents know that there is an audience
who are posing the questions and monitoring their response. As a result, despite a respondent's
true belief, many will answer polling questions in what may appear to be a more socially
desirable way, or not answer at all.
When it comes to President Trump, the mainstream media and academics have led us to believe
that it is not socially desirable (or politically correct) to support him. When up against such
sizable odds, most conservatives will do one of three things:
1) Say we support someone else when we really support the president (lie);
2) tell the truth despite the social undesirability of that response;
3) Not participate in the poll (nonresponse bias).
This situation has several real consequences for Trump polling. First, for those in the
initial voter sample unwilling to participate, the pollster must replace them with people
willing to take the poll. Assuming this segment is made up largely of pro-Trump supporters,
finding representative replacements can be expensive, time-consuming and doing so increases the
sampling error rate (SER) while decreasing the validity of the poll. Sampling error rate is the
gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by
no more than + x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed. All else being equal, a
poll with a sampling error rate of + 2% is more believable than one of + 4% because it has a
larger sample. Immediate polling on issues like President Trump's impeachment may provide
support to journalists with a point of view to broadcast, but with a small sample and high
sampling error rates, the results aren't worthy of one's time and consideration.
Some political pollsters often get around the necessity of repeated sampling over the course
of an election by forming a panel of people who match the demographics (party affiliation, age,
gender, race, location, etc.) of registered voting public. Polling companies often compensate
panel members and use them across the entire election cycle. Such panels are still subject to
the effects of social desirability and initial substitution error.
Interpretive Bias
Another factor to consider is the institution that is conducting the poll and those
reporting the data. Their progressive sensibilities are thumbing the scale of truth. In my
experience, polls conducted by media companies are less credible since they are often guilty of
the same biases seen in their news reports. The perfect example of this is The New York Times's
"
Poll Watch ," which provides a weekly review of their political poll. My experience is that
it reflects strongly the Times's negative opinions about President Trump and conservative ideas
and the paper's heavy political bias.
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Even the Harris Poll, when Lou was alive, suffered somewhat from this bias. Lou Harris was
the first person to conduct serious political polling on a national level and is credited with
giving John Kennedy the competitive advantage over Richard Nixon in the 1960 election. He made
political polling de require for future elections. While many people point to Nixon's twelve
o'clock shadow during the televised debate, Harris gave Kennedy the real competitive advantage
-- a more complete grasp of what issues voters thought were most important and how to tailor
his policy pitches toward that end.
I worked for Lou between 1999-2000. During the election season we would get the daily tab
read-outs. While the results were pristine, Lou would interpret those numbers on NPR and in
other media in a way that showed his clear Democrat bias. His wishful thinking that Al Gore
would beat George W. Bush would color his interpretation of what the numbers meant. In the end,
by a razon thin margin, Bush took the White House and Gore was relegated to inconvenient
environmental truths. Similarly, the 2016 election saw Trump beat favorite Hillary Clinton by a
significant electoral margin, despite
the vast majority of polls giving Mrs. Clinton the edge by between 3-5%.
Where We Go
from Here
Public opinion polling is generally not junk science although with some companies it can be.
Companies like Gallup and Pew consistently do a good job of chronicling political opinion in
America. At issue is the fact that these polling stalwarts don't work for media companies and
use large national samples from current voter rolls; they also tend to not put their thumbs on
the interpretation of data. President Trump is a president unlike any other and most of his
supporters don't participate in political polls. Even Trump's
own pollsters were surprised by his 2016 win. We would do well during these fractured times
to ignore political opinion polls for they will continue to be much to do about nothing.
Just be sure to vote your conscience and that is nobody's opinion but your own.
AntiSocial , 5 hours ago
The polls are skewed, intentionally by the pollsters and unintentionally by anyone with
the common sense not to identify as a Trump supporter.
Would you tell the Nazi Party questioner you were anti - Nazi? How do you feel about Josef
Stalin might be the last question someone would ever answer. Trump people have an
overwhelmingly justified reason to keep it to themselves. Especially in the age of digital
record keeping, and Neo fascism on the Left.
Trump vs: a man whose brain is dying should be a landslide, and could be. BUT the
democrats have succeeded in making the entire population sick to death of hearing about Trump
Is The Devil.
People en masse are not very intelligent and generally do what everyone else is doing,
whatever it is. This time they may know instinctively that the Biden regime will be American
history's biggest failure but they just don't want to hear about Trump anymore, or Covid, or
BLM, and will vote for Biden making just hoping to make it all go away. After that they will
find that when you make mistakes on purpose you usually get what you deserve.
Hawkenschpitt , 6 hours ago
There is another bias besides the article's "interpretive bias." I call it "assumption
bias."
I am one of those whom Pew samples on a regular basis, and across a wide range of issues.
In responding to their queries, I have in the back of my mind how I perceive my responses are
going to show up in the aggregations and the public reporting. It certainly is a
consideration when the survey question is double-edged. For example, given a series of
questions surrounding my perceptions of "climate change" overlooks the wide variance of what
is exactly meant by climate change: are the questions related to the natural dynamism of the
earth's climate, or are they surrogates for Anthropogenic Global Warming? Their questions
assume an agreed-upon definition, and my responses will vary, depending upon what I perceive
to be the underlying basis to the series of questions. This introduces a bias in my
responses.
A recent poll had a series of questions about my activities during these coronavirus
lock-downs: e.g. how does the lock-down affect various of my activities (charitable
donations, volunteer services, neighborly assistance)? Do I do more? Less? About the same?
The wording of the questions shows that they had made an underlying, but false, assumption
that the coronavirus affects my actions.
At the end of every Pew survey, they ask whether I perceived bias in the questions; they
also allow comments on the survey. I take them to task when I encounter these kind of things.
I can only hope that they take my remarks under consideration for their next efforts.
Homer E. Rectus , 6 hours ago
This article spends most of its words trying to convince us that polls are junk science
and then says Pew and Gallup are not. How are they not also junk if they fail to get truthful
answers?
isocratic , 6 hours ago
You have to be really special to trust polls after 2016.
Im4truth4all , 9 hours ago
Polls are just another example of the propaganda...
DrBrown314 , 10 hours ago
Public polls have been rubbish for decades. They average a 0.9% response rate. That is not
a random sample folks. If only 1 person in 100 will agree to take a poll you have a self
selecting sample. Pure garbage. The pollsters have resorted to using "invitation" polling on
the internet and claim this is a probability sample. It is not. It too is rubbish. But you
already knew that because of what the polls said in 2016 and what actually happened. qed.
Alice-the-dog , 10 hours ago
Not to mention that I'm sure there are many like me, who has lied profusely in answer to
every polling call I've gotten ever since I became eligible to vote in 1972. In fact, I
strongly suspect that Trump voters are the most likely demographic to do so.
The Herdsman , 11 hours ago
Bottom line; the polls are fake. We already saw this movie in 2016, we know how it ends.
Back in 2016 you might be fooled by the polls but we already know empirically that they are
rigged. We literally saw it all with our own eyes.... never let anyone talk you out of what
you saw.
Ex-Oligarch , 11 hours ago
This article gives way too much credit to the pollsters.
Polls are constructed to produce a desired result. The respondents selected and the
questions asked are designed to produce that result.
If they do not produce that result, the data can be altered. No one polices this sort of
manipulation, formally or informally.
Adding spin to the result when it is "interpreted" is only the last step. The narrative
promoted in this article that pollsters are honest social scientists carried away by
unconscious biases is a crock.
We have seen articles blaming the respondents for the failures of pollsters over and over
again. This narrative that Trump voters are ashamed of supporting him and so lie to the
pollsters is just more spin designed to make republicans look insincere, amoral and
devious.
Hook-Nosed Swede , 12 hours ago
Mark Twain was quoting Benjamin Disraeli and admitted he wasn't sure the PM actually ever
used that phrase. Incidentally, Twain threw his Confederate uniform away and headed West in
the middle of America's Civil War. I don't see support for Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln
there.
whatisthat , 12 hours ago
I would observe every intelligent and experienced person knows that political based
polling data is suspect to corruption and used as propaganda...
hootowl , 13 hours ago
Political and media polls are used to persuade people to vote for the demonunists by
purposely exaggerating the numbers of demonunists in their polling samples to deceive the
public in order to try to swing the vote to the demonunists and/or to dissuqade conservatives
into believing it is futile to vote because the demonunists are too numerous to overcome.
Ignore the political polls because they are largely conducted by paid liars, manipulators,
and propagandists. The 2020 presidential election is easy to assess. Do you want to elect a
senile, old , treasonous, crook and his family into the WH; or a man, who may, at times make
you a little upset with his abrasive rhetoric, but can be trusted to do what he thinks is
best for his fellow Americans, while he is continuously beset by the worst political cadre of
communists, demonunists, lying MSM/academia, and anti-American deep state crooks in the
history of our great republic.
Gold Banit , 13 hours ago
This is the end for the corrupt racist DemoRat party.
The DemoRats and their fake news media are in a panic and are very desperate and this is
why they are promoting this rioting looting destroying and burning cause their internal
polling has Trump wining 48 states in a landslide....
Thank you Col. Lang for posting portions of the Pettegrew essay.
I'm taking the liberty to clarify Pettegrew essay.
[[Sampling error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results
of a particular poll will vary by no more than +x% than if the entire voter population was
surveyed. All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of +2% is more believable
than one of +4% because it has a larger sample.]]
First, inference may be drawn from a poll ONLY when [IF] there is an actual random
sample.
Thus random sample creates condition for inference [prediction]; this does not guarantee
it.
Second, the inference is a snapshot, at a point in time, not a motion picture, thus any
value days or weeks later may be nil.
This is why polls done weekly or monthly, and if they are done daily, one may perceive a
trend, more easily.
[[Sampling Error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling]]
SE is the difference between what is actual, from the entire population, versus what a
sample – what the sampled data says.
There is no way to know this ahead of time. This is why there are polls.
Polls attempt to know this, within a certain range, usually expressed in percentages.
Polls are supposed to be designed to keep bias as low as possible; because it is bias that
distorts them.
How to measure and/or cure this? There is the tried and true method.
Randomization.
The problem with polls is an age-old one: are data truly taken from a random sample; or
not?
Most these days are not, for many reasons. And pollsters come up with all sorts of models
[often using junk science] to try and get around this elephant in the room as it were.
Some polls may be less non random than others.
This is the problem.
This polling problem is compounded by non response.
Non response is related to problem -- simply because prior to polling, a random sample is
selected ahead of time.
The sample selected may in fact be random; non response destroys the randomness simply
because for each individual who does not respond, the rigor of the poll is diminished.
Even one or two people not responding greatly erodes the rigor of a random sample. [A poll
of 500 people to represent a nation of more than 300 million.]
What actually happens is a polling company may have designed an experiment -- and selected a
random sample of 1,000, or 2,000, or more.
Often they get about 2 percent response rate!
Thus, they have 20 responses; from which no inference can be drawn.
So they re poll and re poll, and might get 400 responses, or more, eventually.
This is where the problems begin. It is a huge problem, from the perspective of trying to
draw inference [prediction] – because what began as an attempt to poll a random sample is
no longer a random sample.
This particular phenomena – is a different problem [which is not to say this is not
related to] the fact that many Trump supporters either do not participate in answering
pollsters; or, on purpose lie to them because -- owing to lack of random sample and pollster
bias – i.e., the pollsters may have a political agenda, or a perceived political agenda.
. . as opposed to conducting a poll that is the public interest.
[["Political polling, whether by telephone or online, is a social setting."]] Pettegrew
states.
Wrong.
Social setting only involve physical interaction; the nature of social is person to person.
This is beyond dispute.
"Social desirability" as Pettegrew frames it, as a factor to potentially distort polling
data is an interesting thesis; however, polling organizations are supposed to and are expected
to have trained questioners and well-designed questions, and ways of asking to adequately
address what this phenomena actually is: plain old "bias." [This training and apropriate
framing of questions reduces bias or at least is supposed to.]
In fact, interviewing someone in person, asking a person questions for a poll, this method
– which is actual social interaction – is not done because it is time consuming and
expensive.
However, expert questioners are much more able to get honest answers, when done in person,
for obvious reasons.
The most obvious one is that someone is not going to sit down and be asked questions unless
they want to.
Since they want to, there is no reason to want to lie, on the face of it.
This person sits down because they believe that their opinion matters.
[[Sampling error rate is the gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results
of a particular poll will vary by no more than +x% than if the entire voter population was
surveyed. All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of +2% is more believable
than one of +4% because it has a larger sample.]]
1] Thus sampling error is the difference between what a total population actually
thinks/believes; and what a survey, via a sample of them say – which cannot be known.
The SE itself is a guess, and there is no way to verify if it is right or wrong; random
sample can be used to obtain a good approximation – to address this conundrum.
2] SE does not mean "that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more than [plus
or minus] + or - x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed."
This refers to something else actually.
It is called the Confidence Interval.
Typical CI is 95 percent [less common CI for polling are 90 percent, and 99 percent].
The plus or minus percent [the range] Pettegrew refers to is a function of
A] the sample size
B] the confidence interval
The higher the confidence interval, the greater the plus or minus range – what
Pettegrew refers to as: "It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by no more
than +x%"
A 99 percent CI means that if a sample surveyed was done 100 times, 99 of those times it
would be within this plus or minus range.
95 percent CI means 19 out of 20 times.
90 percent CI means 9 out of 10 times.
In other words: As the confidence level increases, the margin of error increases –
that is to say, the "+x%" is greater, to use Pettegrew's terminology.
The x becomes a larger percent as confidence interval increases.
With a 90 percent CI, there is always a one in ten chance the data from the sample is a
total bust, for example.
Statisticsshowto.com says it this way: [[A margin of error tells you how many percentage
points your results will differ from the real population value. For example, a 95% confidence
interval with a 4 percent margin of error means that your statistic will be within 4 percentage
points of the real population value 95% of the time.]]
This means the "+x%" will be within this/the range: 19 out of 20 attempts at sampling.
Pettegrew says [[All else being equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of +2% is more
believable than one of +4% because it has a larger sample]]
This is because: The Central Limit Theory says that the greater the number of participants
in a random sample, the closer the statistic obtained [from the sample] will be to the actual
population parameter. [Also, the larger the sample size, the more its distribution approaches a
normal probability distribution – the bell curve – and this is key for inference or
attempts at inference from data from a random sample: because inference is a function of
probability.]
Since the actual population universe is not known, the actual parameter is unknown, thus a
statistic from a sample can [potentially] mimic or come close to reality, assuming it is from
an actual random sample.
PS
A quick note on the man most responsible for developing and making modern statistics and
probability a worthwhile and excellent system and advancing the field of knowledge.
This man is as important to the science of modern statistics and probability as Jesus Christ
and St. Joan are to Christianity, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is too – to the spirit
of freedom and dignity [as opposed to fraudulence and propaganda and parstisan-ism – all
enemies of knowledge and the human spirit] -- Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, is to the science of
statistics and probability.
Because of Fisher's painstaking work, the design of scientific experiments, especially the
use of inference, became a great advance in human knowledge and science.
Because of Fisher, the field of medicine and disease prevention expanded and blossomed.
Random drug trials, for example, all use the pioneering work of Fisher, his conception of
the absolute necessity of random samples from which inference may be drawn from designed
experiments to test medicines -- using probability.
A window honoring him was recently removed from a college at University of Cambridge.
Feel free to read this story [link below], which, sad to say, though it includes the basics
of what just happened, fails to underscore in any way shape or form the perfidy of it all, this
malice, the evil behind it.
A symbolic crucifixion, as it were.
This, the moral turpitude of this counter cultural revolution and their myriad agents
– and all that this implies in western civilization here and now.
Fisher was born February 17, 1890, East Finchley, London; died July 29, 1962, Adelaide,
Australia.
Reason . . . --55 years ago, Barrington Moore Jr. noted that it always hangs in the balance,
on the verge of being murdered, destroyed. This scum trying to destroy us [and themselves --
they are stuck on self-destruction] is a project to destroy Reason. Plain and simple.
"Science is tolerant of reason; relentlessly intolerant of unreason and sham. A flickering
light in our darkness it is, as Morris Cohen once said, but the only one we have, and woe to
him who would put it out."
Did Skripal played any role in this mess. In this case his poisoning looks more logical as an attempt to hide him from
Russians, who might well suspect him in playing a role in creating Steele dossier by some myths that were present in it.
Notable quotes:
"... Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence". ..."
Much of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump was built on the premise
that Christopher Steele and his dossier were to be believed. This even though, early on,
Steele's claims failed to bear scrutiny. Just how far off the claims were became clear when the
FBI interviewed Steele's "Primary Subsource" over three days beginning on Feb. 9, 2017.
Notes taken by FBI agents of those interviews were released by the Senate Judiciary
Committee Friday afternoon.
The Primary Subsource was in reality Steele's sole source, a long-time Russian-speaking
contractor for the former British spy's company, Orbis Business Intelligence. In turn, the
Primary Subsource had a group of friends in Russia. All of their names remain redacted. From
the FBI interviews it becomes clear that the Primary Subsource and his friends peddled
warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence
memos.
Paul Manafort: The Steele dossier's "Primary Subsource" admitted to the FBI "that he was
'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was a 'strange task' to have been given." AP
Photo/Seth Wenig, File
Steele's operation didn't rely on great expertise, to judge from the Primary Subsource's
account. He described to the FBI the instructions Steele had given him sometime in the spring
of 2016 regarding Paul Manafort: "Do you know [about] Manafort? Find out about Manafort's
dealings with Ukraine, his dealings with other countries, and any corrupt schemes." The Primary
Subsource admitted to the FBI "that he was 'clueless' about who Manafort was, and that this was
a 'strange task' to have been given."
The Primary Subsource said at first that maybe he had asked some of his friends in Russia
– he didn't have a network of sources, according to his lawyer, but instead just a
"social circle." And a boozy one at that: When the Primary Subsource would get together with
his old friend Source 4, the two would drink heavily. But his social circle was no help with
the Manafort question and so the Primary Subsource scrounged up a few old news clippings about
Manafort and fed them back to Steele.
Also in his "social circle" was Primary Subsource's friend "Source 2," a character who was
always on the make. "He often tries to monetize his relationship with [the Primary Subsource],
suggesting that the two of them should try and do projects together for money," the Primary
Subsource told the FBI (a caution that the Primary Subsource would repeat again and again.) It
was Source 2 who "told [the Primary Subsource] that there was compromising material on
Trump."
And then there was Source 3, a very special friend. Over a redacted number of years, the
Primary Subsource has "helped out [Source 3] financially." She stayed with him when visiting
the United States. The Primary Subsource told the FBI that in the midst of their conversations
about Trump, they would also talk about "a private subject." (The FBI agents, for all their
hardnosed reputation, were too delicate to intrude by asking what that "private subject"
was).
Michael Cohen: The bogus story of the Trump fixer's trip to Prague seems to have originated
with "Source 3," a woman friend of the Primary Subsource, who was "not sure if Source 3 was
brainstorming here." AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
One day Steele told his lead contractor to get dirt on five individuals. By the time he got
around to it, the Primary Subsource had forgotten two of the names, but seemed to recall Carter
Page, Paul Manafort and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The Primary Subsource said he asked his
special friend Source 3 if she knew any of them. At first she didn't. But within minutes she
seemed to recall having heard of Cohen, according to the FBI notes. Indeed, before long it came
back to her that she had heard Cohen and three henchmen had gone to Prague to meet with
Russians.
Source 3 kept spinning yarns about Michael Cohen in Prague. For example, she claimed Cohen
was delivering "deniable cash payments" to hackers. But come to think of it, the Primary
Subsource was "not sure if Source 3 was brainstorming here," the FBI notes say.
The Steele Dossier would end up having authoritative-sounding reports of hackers who had
been "recruited under duress by the FSB" -- the Russian security service -- and how they "had
been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct
'altering operations' against the the Democratic Party." What exactly, the FBI asked the
subject, were "altering operations?" The Primary Subsource wouldn't be much help there, as he
told the FBI "that his understanding of this topic (i.e. cyber) was 'zero.'" But what about his
girlfriend whom he had known since they were in eighth grade together? The Primary Subsource
admitted to the FBI that Source 3 "is not an IT specialist herself."
And then there was Source 6. Or at least the Primary Subsource thinks it was Source 6.
Ritz-Carlton Moscow: The Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to
confirm the story" about Trump and prostitutes at the hotel. But he did check with someone who
supposedly asked a hotel manager, who said that with celebrities, "one never knows what they're
doing." Moscowjob.net/Wikimedia
While he was doing his research on Manafort, the Primary Subsource met a U.S. journalist "at
a Thai restaurant." The Primary Subsource didn't want to ask "revealing questions" but managed
to go so far as to ask, "Do you [redacted] know anyone who can talk about all of this
Trump/Manafort stuff, or Trump and Russia?" According to the FBI notes, the journalist told
Primary Subsource "that he was skeptical and nothing substantive had turned up." But the
journalist put the Primary Subsource in touch with a "colleague" who in turn gave him an email
of "this guy" journalist 2 had interviewed and "that he should talk to."
With the email address of "this guy" in hand, the Primary Subsource sent him a message "in
either June or July 2016." Some weeks later the Primary Subsource "received a telephone call
from an unidentified Russia guy." He "thought" but had no evidence that the mystery "Russian
guy" was " that guy." The mystery caller "never identified himself." The Primary Subsource
labeled the anonymous caller "Source 6." The Primary Subsource and Source 6 talked for a total
of "about 10 minutes." During that brief conversation they spoke about the Primary Subsource
traveling to meet the anonymous caller, but the hook-up never happened.
Nonetheless, the Primary Subsource labeled the unknown Russian voice "Source 6" and gave
Christopher Steele the rundown on their brief conversation – how they had "a general
discussion about Trump and the Kremlin" and "that it was an ongoing relationship." For use in
the dossier, Steele named the voice Source E.
When Steele was done putting this utterly unsourced claim into the style of the dossier,
here's how the mystery call from the unknown guy was presented: "Speaking in confidence to a
compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US
presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of
co-operation between them and the Russian leadership." Steele writes "Inter alia," – yes,
he really does deploy the Latin formulation for "among other things" – "Source E
acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail
messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee [DNC], to the WikiLeaks
platform."
All that and more is presented as the testimony of a "close associate" of Trump, when it was
just the disembodied voice of an unknown guy.
Perhaps even more perplexing is that the FBI interviewers, knowing that Source E was just an
anonymous caller, didn't compare that admission to the fantastical Steele bluster and declare
the dossier a fabrication on the spot.
But perhaps it might be argued that Christopher Steele was bringing crack investigative
skills of his own to bear. For something as rich in detail and powerful in effect as the
dossier, Steele must have been researching these questions himself as well, using his
hard-earned spy savvy to pry closely held secrets away from the Russians. Or at the very least
he must have relied on a team of intelligence operatives who could have gone far beyond the
obvious limitations the Primary Subsource and his group of drinking buddies.
But no. As we learned in December from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Steele "was not
the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting." Steele, the IG
reported "relied on a primary sub-source (Primary Sub-source) for information, and this Primary
Sub-source used a network of [further] sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed
to Steele." The inspector general's report noted that "neither Steele nor the Primary
Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported."
One might, by now, harbor some skepticism about the dossier. One might even be inclined to
doubt the story that Trump was "into water sports" as the Primary Subsource so delicately
described the tale of Trump and Moscow prostitutes. But, in this account, there was an effort,
however feeble, to nail down the "rumor and speculation" that Trump engaged in "unorthodox
sexual activity at the Ritz."
While the Primary Subsource admitted to the FBI "he had not been able to confirm the story,"
Source 2 (who will be remembered as the hustler always looking for a lucrative score)
supposedly asked a hotel manager about Trump and the manager said that with celebrities, "one
never knows what they're doing." One never knows – not exactly a robust proof of
something that smacks of urban myth. But the Primary Subsource makes the best of it, declaring
that at least "it wasn't a denial."
If there was any denial going on it was the FBI's, an agency in denial that its
extraordinary investigation was crumbling.
bh2, 23 minutes ago
Even Beria would laugh at this kind of "evidence".
Polls are designed to influence public opinion, not so much to inform. This is especially
true for MSNBC and CNN polls. They are just a powerful tool to win the election by projecting
the aura of invincibility over Creepy Joe and thus influencing undecided voters and voters who
look for a winner.
I think that the increase in polarization of the USA society after the "Summer of love"
favors Trump. Neoliberal Dems burned all the bridges, so to speak. Now they symbolize an
abysmal failure during the "summer of love," including CHAZ fiasco and the recent Chicago riot
-- attempt to topple the Columbus statue.
I wonder how many Americans watched the video with the view from above (probably from a
drone) embedded in WGN TV News twit referenced in the article below. It is clear from this
video that this was a well-organized attack by a determined group of rioters.
Looks like a typical Soros staged spectacle with hired guns/thugs coordinating with
neoliberal MSM, who is running the show.
Add to this the fallout from Russiagate/Obamagate that probably is coming in some form later
and, possibly, from Maxwell scandal (where Clinton was probably involved and needs to be
questioned )
It will be interesting to see poll results a few days before the November election, as
that'll be when many pollsters try to bolster their reputations by presenting results using the
best methodologies they're capable of. We witnessed this in 2016 when final polling suddenly
indicated a tight race.
Most polls are commissioned or sponsored by the MSM. Enough said I guess...
IMO it is way too early to handicap the presidential election. In any case national polls
are essentially meaningless when the presidency is decided by a handful of states. I think
2020 presidency will be decided by Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Trump won
some of these states by narrow margins in 2016.
I think the one big difference for Trump in 2020 is that Jared is completely running the
campaign, whereas in 2016 Bannon was at the helm during the home stretch while Jared &
Parscale managed the Facebook platform.
While this election should have been a home-run for Trump, his campaign has faltered since
the spring and as voter attention grows in the next couple months does he have the right
people managing the campaign? Especially since 2020 will be unique - probably the first
virtual campaign. Biden will not be doing any debates and will have only fully scripted
moments that will be broadcast. And Trump rallies will likely be curtailed as older people
the main voting demographic will not show up in numbers.
Of course the Senate will be the crucial election with the Democrats only needing a gain
of 4 to get the majority.
B efore it became a political term, "conservative" was the antonym of "destructive." When
the word acquired political significance in the English language beginning in the early 19th
century -- Britain's Conservative Party was founded in 1834 -- this older definition continued
to be part of its meaning in the new context. The political forces that conservatives opposed,
such as liberalism and radicalism, were inclined toward destruction. Those liberals and
radicals who most admired the French Revolution were candid about this: they wished to destroy
the existing legal, religious, social, and economic order so as to build a better, more
rational one in its place.
Conservatism is a counterrevolutionary force: the antithesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism,
not simply as historical movements but as revolutionary tendencies to which the Left -- and
sometimes the Right -- is susceptible. But conservatism is not simply the negation of
incendiary ideology; it is also affirmation of a principle -- the anti-utopian view that,
despite its flaws, our civilization is worthy of our loyalty, even unto death.
You may have heard that American conservatism is not really conservative at all, it's just
"classical liberalism." America was born in revolution, and as Louis Hartz influentially argued
in the 1950s, Lockean liberalism is virtually our sole tradition. True conservatism arises from
feudalism, which means that in this country it exists only as an exotic import, displaced in
space and time from the lands of Habsburgs or Romanovs.
This is what liberals would like American conservatives to believe, but the opposite is more
nearly the truth: conservatism is not classical liberalism; rather, what is best in classical
liberalism depends on conservatism. To understand this, one must return to the historical
milieu in which "conservative" and "liberal" became political terms. In the 1830s these words
indicated on both sides of the Atlantic opposing attitudes toward the French Revolution and its
legacy. Writing in the North American Review in 1835, Thomas Jefferson's biographer B.L.
Rayner retrospectively applies the labels to the two great factions of American politics in the
first decade of the republic: "If Mr. Jefferson and his friends sympathised, as every one knows
that they did, with the liberal party in Europe, their opponents, the Federalists of that day,
sympathised in like manner with the aristocratic, or as it is now called, legitimate or
conservative party in Europe -- the party which, in order to avoid any epithet in the least
degree offensive or even questionable, we have called the party of Law."
In Britain, the Conservative Party developed out of a longstanding coalition of
anti-revolutionary Whigs and Tories who at one stage had been known as the "Friends of Pitt" --
that is, political allies who carried on the anti-French policies of the "independent Whig"
Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, who had died in 1806. In the U.S., the anti-French
faction of the 1790s was the Federalist Party, and although George Washington's administration,
like Pitt's ministry, was notionally above party, in practice Washington was very much aligned
with the anti-French, pro-British, counterrevolutionary politics of his Treasury secretary
Alexander Hamilton and his vice president and successor John Adams. America's first government
was conservative.
The Federalists did not long survive the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800,
but the extinction of a conserative party did not mean the extinction of conservative,
counterrevolutionary politics, which lived on within Jefferson's own party. Jefferson himself
had cooled in his revolutionary ardor, and conservatism prevailed even under America's first
liberal president.
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The fact that America's war of independence had been a revolution, and that John Locke's
philosophy was at the heart of its Declaration, is not the refutation of American conservatism
that might be imagined. No less a foe of Jacobinism than Edmund Burke cherished another
revolution, after all, one that was conservative rather than destructive -- the "Glorious
Revolution" of 1688 that had established the constitutional order Burke strove to defend.
Locke, for his part, had presented his Second Treatise as a justification of the
Glorious Revolution. That revolution, like America's nearly a century later, was understood by
the revolutionaries themselves as a change in continuity with the nation's historic principles.
When the Americans invoked Lockean ideas, they did so in the full knowledge that George III's
own legitimacy in England rested in the eyes of many of his subjects -- especially those of
parliamentary Whigs who were already skeptical of the war with America -- on the Lockean
interpretation of the Revolution of 1688. The British could not deny the Americans their rights
without at the same time denying part of the foundation of Britain's own constitution: the
Declaration of Independence in effect made a conservative, originalist argument.
There was much historical mythologizing involved in the Glorious Revolution and the American
Revolution. But the impulse to reconcile such alterations in government with the historical
character of the nation was a conservative motive, in sharp contrast to the rationalistic and
radically transformative impulse behind the likes of the Jacobins or the Bolsheviks. As for
Britain's legitimist opponents of the Glorious Revolution -- the Jacobite Tories who believed
Parliament was wrong to depose James II -- their conservatism was real but hopeless.
Conservatism must actually conserve. The ancien regime proved to be unsalvageable
everywhere: in Stuart Britain, Bourbon France, Habsburg Austria, Romanov Russia, even imperial
China. Italy's Catholic faith was not enough to preserve the Papal States, either.
The age of ideological revolution has not ended; the revolutionary spirit has only assumed
new forms. In China, still ruled by a Communist Party, it has become institutionalized, and the
revolution is advanced not in the crude manner of the old Soviet Union but through a strategy
of global economic transformation, coupled with ruthless reeducation programs at home. In the
West, liberalism has cut loose from its civilizational roots, and from all conservative
restraint, and has become an ideology of cultural revolution combined with an acceptance of the
global economic reconfiguration also desired by China.
The conservative's task today, as during the French Revolution and the Cold War, is
counterrevolutionary. But now the revolution is truly global, and though it may not be as
violent as in centuries past -- not yet -- the stakes are hardly lower. America and her
conservatives will need the utmost resolve, and a deep commitment to the sources of our
civilization, if we are to prevail again. Yet until now, at least, Providence seems to have
intended the Anglo-Americans to be the firefighters against the conflagration.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review , and
editor-at-large of The American Conservative.
A top government watchdog group obtained 136 pages of never before publicized emails between
former FBI lovers
Peter Strzok and
Lisa Page and one in particular appears to refer to a confidential informant inside the
White House in 2017, according to a press release from
Judicial Watch .
Those emails, some of which are heavily redacted, reveal that "Strzok, Page and top bureau
officials in the days prior to and following
President Donald Trump's inauguration discussing a White House counterintelligence briefing
that could "play into" the
FBI's "investigative strategy."
Majority Say They Want to See Trump's Taxes, Many Think Returns Would Hurt Reelection
Chances
White House Reportedly Moves to Make Coronavirus Cases Private by Cutting Out
CDC
Trump White House Reportedly Conducting 'Loyalty' Interviews of Officials,
Appointees
Majority Don't Trust Trump's Public Messages on COVID-19, Disapproval on Pandemic Response
Hits 60%
Trump's Niece Says She's Heard Him Use the N-Word, Anti-Semitic Slurs
Trump Administration is Reportedly Out to Smear Dr. Anthony Fauci for Early Comments on
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Trump Refuses To Unveil Obama's Portrait At The White House
White House Testing Staff For COVID-19, But Are Results Accurate?
Moreover, another email sent by Strzok to Bill
Priestap, the Former Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division, refers to
what appears to be a confidential informant in the White House. The email was sent the day
after Trump's inauguration.
"I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted]," wrote Strzok. "
I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters
there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to
have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one
of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her
to handle WH detailee interaction."
In April, 2019 this reporter first published information that there was an alleged
confidential informant for the FBI in the White House. In fact, then senior Republican Chairmen
of the Senate Appropriations Committee
Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson submitted a
letter to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing the new texts from
Strzok to Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White
House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration.
The Chairmen revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been already
been obtained by SaraACarter.com and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit
White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.
At the time, texts obtained by this news site and sources stated that Strzok had one
significant contact within the White House – at the time that would have been Vice
President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock,
as reported.
Over the past year, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with years
of numerous Congressional investigations, has uncovered a plethora of documentation revealing
the most intimate details of the FBI's now debunked investigation into Trump's campaign and its
alleged conspiracy with Russia.
For example, in a series of emails exchanged by top bureau officials – in the FBI
General Counsel's office, Counterintelligence Division and Washington Field office on Jan. 19,
2017 – reveal that senior leadership, including former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were
coordinating with each other in their ongoing attempt to target the incoming administration.
Priestap was also included in the email exchanges. The recent discovery in April, of Priestap's
handwritten notes taken in January, 2017 before the Strzok and his FBI partner interviewed
Flynn were a bombshell. In Priestap's notes he states, "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to
get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
In one recent email chain obtained by Judicial Watch, FBI assistant general counsel in the
FBI's National Security Law Branch stated in an email to Strzok [which was almost entirely
redacted]
"I'll give Trisha/Baker a heads up too," it stated. Strzok's reply to the assistant
general counsel, however, was redacted by DOJ. The response back to Strzok has also been
redacted.
Then later in the evening at 7:04 p.m., Strzok sends another emails stating, "I briefed
Bill (Priestap) this afternoon and he was trying without success to reach the DD [McCabe]. I
will forward below to him as his [sic] changes the timeline. What's your recommendation?"
The reply, like many of the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the DOJ, is almost
entirely redacted. The email response to Strzok was from the Counterintelligence
Division.
Here's what was not redacted
"Approved by tomorrow afternoon is the request. [Redacted] – please advise if I am
missing something." An unidentified official replies, "[Redacted], Bill is aware and willing
to jump in when we need him."
Judicial Watch Timeline of Events On Emails Obtained Through FOIA
At 8 p.m., Strzok responds back (copying officials in the Counterintelligence Division,
Washington Field Office and General Counsel's office):
"Just talked with Bill. [Redacted]. Please relay above to WFO and [redacted] tonight, and
keep me updated with plan for meet and results of same. Good luck."
Strzok then forwards the whole email exchange to Lisa Page, saying, "Bill spoke with Andy.
[Redacted.] Here we go again "
The Day After Trump's Inauguration
The day after Trump's inauguration, on Jan. 21, 2017, Strzok forwarded Page and [a redacted
person] an
email he'd sent that day to Priestap. Strzok asked them to "not forward/share."
In the email to Priestap, Strzok said, "I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing
routed from [redacted]. I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending
investigative matters there, this brief may play into our investigative strategy , and I would
like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the
briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I
did when you asked her to handle WH detailee interaction."
" Also, on January 21, 2017, Strzok wrote largely the same message
he'd sent to Priestap directly to his counterintelligence colleague Jennifer Boone ," states
Judicial Watch.
The records were produced to Judicial Watch in a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA)
lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 2017 request for all
communications between Strzok and Page ( Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)).
The FBI has only processed emails at a rate of 500 pages per month and has yet to process
text messages. At this rate, the production of these communications, which still number around
8,000 pages, would not be completed until at least late 2021.
In other emails, Strzok comments on reporting on the anti-Trump dossier authored by Hillary
Clinton's paid operative Christopher Steele.
In a January 2017 email ,
Strzok takes issue with a UK Independent report which claimed Steele had suspected there was a
"cabal" within the FBI which put the Clinton email investigation above the Trump-Russia probe.
Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, was at the heart of both the Clinton email and
Trump-Russia investigations.
In April and June of 2017, the FBI would use the dossier as key evidence in obtaining FISA
warrants to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. In a declassified
summary of a Department of Justice assessment of the warrants that was released by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in January of this year, it was determined that
those two applications to secretly monitor Page lacked probable cause.
The newly released records include a January 11, 2017, email
from Strzok to Lisa Page, Priestap, and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Jon
Moffa, a New York Times report
which refers to the dossier as containing "unsubstantiated accounts" and "unproven claims." In
the email, Strzok comments on the article, calling it "Pretty good reporting."
On January 14, 2017, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs Michael Kortan forwards
to Strzok, Page and Priestap a link to a UK
Independent article entitled "Former MI6 Agent Christopher Steele's Frustration as FBI Sat
On Donald Trump Russia File for Months".
The article, citing security sources, notes that "Steele became increasingly frustrated that
the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to
believe there was a cover-up: that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr
Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Clinton's emails."
Strzok responds: "Thanks Mike. Of course not accurate [the cover-up/cabal nonsense]. Is that
question gaining traction anywhere else?"
The records also include a February 10, 2017, email
from Strzok to Page mentioning then-national security adviser Michael Flynn (five days before
Flynn resigned) and includes a photo of Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Strzok
also makes a joke about how McCabe had fat shamed Kislyak.
On February 8, 2017, Strzok, under the subject "RE: EO on Economic Espionage," emailed
Lisa Page, saying, "Please let [redacted] know I talked to [redacted]. Tonight, he approached
Flynn's office and got no information." Strzok was responding to a copy of an email Page had
sent him. The email, from a redacted FBI official to Deputy Director McCabe read: "OPS has not
received a draft EO on economic espionage. Instead, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advised OPS
that they received a draft, but they did not send us the draft. I'll follow up with our
detailees about this EO." Flynn resigned
on February 13, 2017.
On January 26, 2017, Nancy McNamara of the FBI's Inspection Division emailed
Strzok and Priestap with the subject line "Leak," saying, "Tried calling you but the phones are
forwarded to SIOC. I got the tel call report, however [redacted]. Feel free to give me a call
if I have it wrong." Strzok forwarded the McNamara email to Lisa Page and an unidentified
person in the General Counsel's office, saying, "Need to talk to you about how to respond to
this."
On January 11, 2017, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff emailed
Kortan, saying he'd learned that Steele had worked for the Bureau's Eurasian organized crime
section and had turned over the dossier on Trump-Russian "collusion" to the bureau in Rome.
Kortan forwards Isikoff's email to aide Richard Quinn, who forwards to Strzok "just for
visibility". Strzok forwards to his boss, Priestap and Moffa, saying, "FYI, [redacted], you or
I should probably inform [redacted]. How's your relationship with him? Bill unless you object,
I'll let Parmaan [presumably senior FBI official Bryan Paarmann] know." Strzok forwards the
whole exchange onto Lisa Page.
On January 18, 2017, reporter Peter Elkind of ProPublica reached
out to Kortan, asking to interview Strzok, Michael Steinbach, Jim Baker, Priestap, former
FBI Director James Comey and DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg for a story Elkind was working
on. Kortan replied, "Okay, I will start organizing things." Further along in the thread, an FBI
Press Office official reached out to an FBI colleague for assistance with the interviews,
saying Steinbach had agreed to a "background discussion" with Elkind, who was "writing the
'definitive' account of what happened during the Clinton investigation, specifically, Comey's
handling of the investigation, seeking to reconstruct and explain in much greater detail what
he did and why he did it." In May 2017, Elkind wrote an
article titled "The Problems With the FBI's Email Investigation Went Well Beyond Comey,"
which in light of these documents, strongly suggests many FBI officials leaked to the
publication.
Strzok ended up being scheduled
to meet with Elkind at 9:30 a.m. on January 31, 2017, before an Elkind interview of Comey's
chief of staff Jim Rybicki. Elkind's reporting on the Clinton email investigation was discussed
at length in previous
emails obtained by Judicial Watch.
"These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he
stepped foot in the Oval Office," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "And now we see how
the Comey FBI was desperate to spin, through high-level leaks, its mishandling of the Clinton
email investigation. And, in a continuing outrage, it should be noted that Wray's FBI and
Barr's DOJ continue slow-walk the release of thousands of Page-Strzok emails – which
means the remaining 8,000 pages of records won't be reviewed and released until 2021-2022!"
In February 2020, Judicial Watch
uncovered an August 2016 email in which Strzok says that Clinton, in her interview with the
FBI about her email controversy, apologized for "the work and effort" it caused the bureau and
she said she chose to use it "out of convenience" and that "it proved to be anything but."
Strzok said Clinton's apology and the "convenience" discussion were "not in" the FBI 302 report
that summarized the interview.
Also in February, Judicial Watch made public Strzok-Page emails showing their direct
involvement in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the bureau's investigation of alleged
collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The records also show additional "confirmed
classified emails" were found on Clinton's unsecure non-state.gov email server "beyond the number presented" in
then-FBI Director James Comey's statements; Strzok and Page questioning the access the DOJ was
granting Clinton's lawyers; and Page revealing that the DOJ was making edits to FBI 302 reports
related to the Clinton Midyear Exam investigation. The emails detail a discussion about
"squashing" an issue related to the Seth Rich controversy.
In January 2020, Judicial Watch
uncovered Strzok-Page emails that detail special accommodations given to the lawyers of
Clinton and her aides during the FBI investigation of the Clinton email controversy.
In November 2019, Judicial Watch
revealed Strzok-Page emails that show the attorney representing three of Clinton's aides
were given meetings with senior FBI officials.
Also in November, Judicial Watch
uncovered emails revealing that after Clinton's statement denying the transmission of
classified information over her unsecure email system, Strzok sent an email to FBI officials
citing "three [Clinton email] chains" containing (C) [classified] portion marks in front of
paragraphs."
In a related case, in May 2020, Judicial Watch received the " electronic
communication " (EC) that officially launched the counterintelligence investigation, termed
"Crossfire Hurricane," of President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The document was
written by former FBI official Peter Strzok.
"The reason why we shouldn't believe most of the current or future polling results about
President Trump can be summarized in two words: Social Desirability.
Social desirability is a concept first advanced by psychologist Allen L. Edwards in 1953. It
advances the idea that when asked about an issue in a social setting, people will always answer
in a socially desirable manner whether or not they really believe it . Political polling,
whether by telephone or online, is a social setting. Respondents know that there is an audience
who are posing the questions and monitoring their response. As a result, despite a respondent's
true belief, many will answer polling questions in what may appear to be a more socially
desirable way, or not answer at all.
When it comes to President Trump, the mainstream media and academics have led us to believe
that it is not socially desirable (or politically correct) to support him . When up against
such sizable odds, most conservatives will do one of three things: 1) Say we support someone
else when we really support the president (lie); 2) tell the truth despite the social
undesirability of that response; 3) Not participate in the poll (nonresponse bias).
This situation has several real consequences for Trump polling. First, for those in the
initial voter sample unwilling to participate, the pollster must replace them with people
willing to take the poll. Assuming this segment is made up largely of pro-Trump supporters,
finding representative replacements can be expensive, time-consuming and doing so increases the
sampling error rate (SER) while decreasing the validity of the poll. Sampling error rate is the
gold standard statistic in polling. It means that the results of a particular poll will vary by
no more than + x% than if the entire voter population was surveyed. All else being
equal, a poll with a sampling error rate of + 2% is more believable than one of +
4% because it has a larger sample. Immediate polling on issues like President Trump's
impeachment may provide support to journalists with a point of view to broadcast, but with a
small sample and high sampling error rates, the results aren't worthy of one's time and
consideration."
--------------
I watched today as the crypto lefty Michael Smerconish interviewed Jason Miller from the
Trump campaign. He insisted that Miller "face up to the bad recent poll results" on Trump. What
he wanted was for Miller to concede defeat in the November election. Miller pointed out that
all the polls cited by MS consistently under sample Republicans by more than 10%. The typical
Republican sample size is between 25 and 30% in these polls. MS simply ignored that and went on
making his case for Trump's coming defeat.
MS's weekly on air poll asked the question "Is the election over? " He was visibly
disappointed when his mostly liberal audience replied "no" by 69% of a 16000 vote sample.
pl
I don't believe the polls, neither neutral pollsters, nor anybody else's regardless of
which way they lean politically. With Caller-ID so prevalent today, nobody I know answers the
phone anymore unless they recognize the number. Especially for 800 #s. I have NoMoRobo
installed on my landline that automatically cuts off all computerized autodial calls. I need
to get something similar for my cell phone.
As for on-air polls, they are complete BS, more like fairy tale genre for four year olds.
Doesn't matter whether they are done by MSNBC or Fox or any other TV network or radio
station.
I've long wondered what the numbers would look like if the pollsters cataloged every
response along the lines of "go f*** yourself" as a vote for Trump...
For those of you who don't watch CNN, I'm in that category, I urge you to watch it on
election night, it's pure bliss watching Wolf Blitzer twitch and burn.
"The reason why we shouldn’t believe most of the current or future polling results about President Trump can be summarized in
two words: Social Desirability..."
I've long wondered what the numbers would look like if the pollsters cataloged every
response along the lines of "go f*** yourself" as a vote for Trump...
"... Interestingly, June 2017 is when the FBI and DOJ signed off on the last extension of the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign via adviser Carter Page. The warrant was signed by acting FBI director and Comey's former deputy Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who wrote both the memo used to fire Comey and the scope memo for the Mueller investigation. ..."
"... Evidence has shown that the initial FISA warrant against Page – in October 2016, shortly before the election – and the three renewals all relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, without making it clear to the court that it was unverified opposition research compiled at the behest of a rival political party. ..."
"... "miscarriage of justice" ..."
"... "collusion" ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
"... the infamous dossier used as a pretext to spy on President Donald Trump's campaign was unreliable ..."
New documents show the FBI was aware that the infamous dossier
used as a pretext to spy on President Donald Trump's campaign was unreliable, and that the New York Times published false information
about the 'Russiagate' probe.
The two documents were published on Friday by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina),
as part of an ongoing probe of the FBI's investigation of Trump. One is a 59-page, heavily redacted
interview
of the "primary sub-source" for Christopher Steele, the British spy commissioned through a series of cut-outs by the
Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump during the 2016 election campaign.
While the identity of the source is hidden, the document makes it clear it was not a current or former Russian official, but a
non-Russian employee of Steele's British company, Orbis. The source's testimony seriously questioned the claims made in the dossier
– which is best known for the salacious accusation that Trump was being blackmailed by Russia with tapes of an alleged sex romp in
a Moscow hotel.
The second, and more intriguing, document is a five-page
printout
of a February 14, 2017 article from the New York Times, along with 13 notes by Peter Strzok, one of the senior FBI agents handling
the Russiagate probe. The article was published five days after the FBI interview with the sub-source, and Strzok actually shows
awareness of it (in note 11, specifically).
In the very first note, Strzok labeled as "misleading and inaccurate" the claim by the New York Times that the Trump
campaign had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials before the 2016 election, noting there was "no evidence"
of this.
Likewise, Strzok denied the FBI was investigating Roger Stone (note 10) – a political operative eventually indicted by Special
Counsel Robert Mueller over allegedly lying about (nonexistent) ties to WikiLeaks, whose sentence Trump recently commuted to outrage
from 'Russiagate' proponents. Nor was Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort on any calls involving Russian government officials,
contrary to claims by the Times (note 3).
Not only did the FBI know the story was false, in part based on the knowledge they had from Steele's source, but the recently
ousted FBI director Jim Comey had openly disputed it in June 2017. The paper stood by its reporting.
Interestingly, June 2017 is when the FBI and DOJ signed off on the last extension of the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign
via adviser Carter Page. The warrant was signed by acting FBI director and Comey's former deputy Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein – who wrote both the memo used to fire Comey and the scope memo for the Mueller investigation.
Evidence has shown that the initial FISA warrant against Page – in October 2016, shortly before the election – and the three renewals
all relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, without making it clear to the court that it was unverified opposition research compiled
at the behest of a rival political party.
The last two renewals, in April and June 2017, were requested after the sub-source interview. Commenting on the document release,
Sen. Graham called these two renewals a "miscarriage of justice" and argued that the FBI and the Department of Justice should
have stopped and re-evaluated their case.
Mueller eventually found no "collusion" between Trump and Russia as alleged by the Democrats, but not before a dozen
people – from Stone and Manafort to Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn and innocent Russian student Maria Butina
– became casualties of the investigation.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! 236 13
Austin Rock 22 hours ago Staggering is the monumental deceitful effort to hitch Trump to Russia. And yet for MSM and their poodles
in the press no barb thrown is too outragious, no smear is too false enough. With Google, Twitter and Facebook on board we Europeans
are being played. But we Europeans are not as stupid as your average US punter. These pathetic fairy tales are an embarressement
to journalism.
Senate panel releases key FBI memo on Christopher Steele; reaction from John Solomon,
co-author of 'Fallout,' and Rep. Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House Intelligence
Committee.
The
Trump-Russia collusion story continues to be eaten away, and these new notes from disgraced ex-FBI Agent Peter Strzok center on
The
New York Times
and their reporting that got the ball rolling on this media manufactured myth. Yes, it's about time we say
that because these documents, which analyzed the piece about Trump aides having contacts with Russian intelligence officials
before the 2016 election, has more utility being used to catch crap from birdcages now that's been exposed as a fraud. In 2017,
this
"bombshell" dropped
. Even at the outset, there was still no evidence of collusion. Just rumor and unsubstantiated gossip.
"The
officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation," that's what the
Times
had
in their piece. It's one of the many bombshells that turned out to be nothing burgers, part of the liberal media's Russia fetish
that turned into one of the biggest, if not
the biggest
, journalism fails ever. It's sad,
really. All one had to do was merely accept that Lady McBeth, aka Hillary Rodham Clinton, lost the 2016 election. Any person with
cognitive function knew that this story was just simply too good to be true. Second, when weeks and months go by and no evidence
arises, it's a dud. When multiple "breaks" in the case, arise and turn out to be garbage -- there's nothing to the story. It's not
real. It's a myth, but the anti-Trump opposition press kept pressing and pressing until we got a clown show the likes of which we
have never seen. Now, part of it is a bit annoying because we all knew the truth before these clowns did, but seeing these guys
fail and have their work just be totally trashed, burned to a crisp, and then pissed on is just pure gold. Two words that can be
applied to the entire Democrat-media complex: Suck. It.
So,
let's get to the notes that deliver a tomahawk to the face of the liberal media. Based on the FBI's notes, pretty much everything
in it was a lie. "Misleading, inaccurate, and no evidence" are the key phrases Strzok used concerning this fake news story. The
story said that Paul Manafort was plugged into the calls. The FBI said, "We are unaware of any calls with any Russian govt
official in which Manafort was a party."
The
publication said Roger Stone was part of the FBI's Russian inquiry. The FBI denied this. Then-FBI Director James Comey, who would
later be fired for cause in May of 2017, also disputed the story but the NYT decided to stand by it because 'orange man bad.'
Well, they do deserve Pulitzers I guess for being the biggest dupes in the business for taking fake information at face value.
Has the media learned that yet too? Probably not because they're all abjectly stupid people, but not all classified information
is true. It can be false. Remember that next time you report on leaks about North Korean Kim Jong-un being brain dead.
The
ripple effect from stories like this was severe. It led scores of reporters down a media-manufactured alternate reality that some
have not climbed out of yet. They took the blue pill and remained in wonderland.
"Ignorance is bliss," or maybe in this case just pure unadulterated idiocy.
You
guys were wrong. How many times do we have to hit you on the head with a baseball bat until you get it? You were wrong. Your
stories were trash, based in lies and false information and weaponized by Democrats to try and usurp a duly elected president
because you don't like him. You're all entitled brats who deserve an ass-kicking. And Barack Obama appears to be calling the
shots on some of the major battles in this fake news fiasco, specifically when it comes to Michael Flynn, who has been vindicated
regarding his role in this whole mess. He was innocent and targeted by former members of the Obama administration, including
former Vice President Joe Biden.
"... The example of China, which operates under Confucian values and regards stable society as the highest good, is causing many in the world to rethink the idea of "democracy" and what that concept actually entails. As Chinese political scientist Zhang Weiwe has pointed out, in the US, the parties are "parties of interest" - whoever wins the vote gets to push the values of that interest, and the people represented by the losing party are simply outcast from the "democracy" until the next vote. He has a 5-minute clip in great English for those interested: The CPC is not a "party" ..."
Referring to China, you say "the 'people' have absolutely zero say in regard to what
the government/system actually does do."
This is absolutely not the case. The exact opposite is the true picture, ironically so,
since the Chinese government conducts more polls than any other entity on the planet. When
one studies China's system of government one learns how all that input from the people is
actually put to use, being scientifically (i.e. not politically) fed into the decision-making
process.
China's way of governing actually presents a measure of democracy, in terms of the voice
of the people being heard and acted upon, that is vastly greater than the so-called
democracies.
Godfree Roberts over at Unz Review is probably your simplest path to knowing this.
Searching his archive there will yield data-driven reports on how the Communist Party
actually works, how the President exercises power, what the Constitution dictates (and the
penalties for not following it), and how satisfied with their current government are the
Chinese people - who are not easy to please when it comes to governance, and who have a
history that shows they will rebel when they're not happy.
Today, Chinese democracy resembles Proctor and Gamble more than Pericles. There are more
than a thousand polling firms in China and its government spends prolifically on surveys,
as author Jeff J. Brown says, "My Beijing neighborhood committee and town hall are
constantly putting up announcements, inviting groups of people–renters, homeowners,
over seventies, women under forty, those with or without medical insurance,
retirees–to answer surveys. The CPC is the world's biggest pollster for a reason:
China's democratic 'dictatorship of the people' is highly engaged at the day-to-day,
citizen-on-the-street level. I know, because I live in a middle class Chinese community and
I question them all the time. I find their government much more responsive and democratic
than the dog-and-pony shows back home, and I mean that seriously".
Even the imperious Mao would remind colleagues, "If we don't investigate public
opinion we have no right to voice our own opinion. Public opinion is our guideline for
action," which is why Five Year Plans are the results of intensive polling. Citizens'
sixty-two percent voter participation suggests that they think their votes count.
It may be that this one article answers the question of democracy for the interested
reader, but likely one should read a few more to become convinced.
~~
The example of China, which operates under Confucian values and regards stable society as
the highest good, is causing many in the world to rethink the idea of "democracy" and what
that concept actually entails. As Chinese political scientist Zhang Weiwe has pointed out, in
the US, the parties are "parties of interest" - whoever wins the vote gets to push the values
of that interest, and the people represented by the losing party are simply outcast from the
"democracy" until the next vote. He has a 5-minute clip in great English for those
interested: The CPC is
not a "party"
China's government by contrast is a "party of all" and acts on behalf of no vested
interest but instead for the greatest benefit for the many.
To get a glimpse of how this works, read the March 2019 commentary on the two annual
governance sessions that decide ongoing policy for China, which supplies this acute
understanding of the true heart of representative governance:
"... Top former [Obama] officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, are said to be targets of the Durham investigation. ..."
"... "The deep state is so deep that ppl get away w political crimes," wrote Grassley on Twitter. "Durham should be producing some fruit of his labor." ..."
Investigative reporter John Solomon says there's a "lot of activity" in U.S. Attorney John
Durham's criminal investigation of the Obama administration's probe of now-debunked claims of
Trump-Russia collusion during the 2016 election.
"My sources tell me there's a lot of activity. I'm seeing, personally, activity behind the
scenes [showing] the Department of Justice is trying to bring those first indictments, "
Solomon said in an interview with the Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs
reported by the Washington Examiner .
"And I would look for a time around Labor Day to see the first sort of action by the
Justice Department."
Solomon said he's seeing "action consistent with building prosecutions and preparing for
criminal plea bargains."
"Until they bring it before the grand jury you never know if it's going to happen. I'm
seeing activity consistent with that. "
Top former [Obama] officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, are said to be targets of
the Durham investigation.
But Attorney General William Barr has said he doesn't expect Obama and former Vice President
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to be subjects of a criminal
investigation.
Solomon said he is hearing from defense lawyers and people "on the prosecution side" that
complications with the coronavirus pandemic are "slowing down" the grand jury process.
"There is overwhelming evidence in the public record now that crimes were committed,"
Solomon said.
He cited "falsification of documents, false testimony, false representations before the FISA
court."
WND reported this week Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee, said Durham should launch any prosecutions before the November election.
"The deep state is so deep that ppl get away w political crimes," wrote Grassley on
Twitter. "Durham should be producing some fruit of his labor."
A report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found at least 17 "significant" errors
or omissions related to the Obama administration's efforts to use the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act provisions against Trump.
WND reported former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova said the public shouldn't worry about whether
or not charges are filed against Obama and Biden.
"Shaming" them will undoubtedly happen, with or without charges, he argued in an interview
with Boston radio host Howie Carr.
"I happen to believe that the public shaming of former President Obama and Vice President
Biden is far more important than indicting them," he said.
So much happens so fast in a world with a 15-minute news cycle that it's difficult for a
journalist to stop and breathe, let alone ponder the meaning of the latest breathless
reporting.
As an example, it seems like it was months ago when the D.C. Court of Appeals ordered Judge
Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, but
it was actually less than two weeks ago. June 24 to be exact, but to Flynn it probably seems
like forever. No word from Sullivan about whether he intends to follow the order of the senior
court, or continue to stall in an effort to punish Lt. Gen. Flynn for his political crime of
supporting President Trump. But based on his record so far, Sullivan can probably be counted on
to drag his feet while thumbing his nose at justice.
Whether it is the Flynn case, or the persecution of one-time Trump adviser Roger Stone for a
procedural crime of lying before a malevolent Congress, the implicit reason behind all the
over-the-top harassment almost seems to be to goad Trump into pardoning his much-maligned
associates in order to create another fake news cycle as we head into the 2020 election. Nobody
asks, "Did you see what that corrupt judge did? Or what the Democrat-worshiping DOJ did?" It's
always " Did you hear what that crazy bastard Trump did?" )
It doesn't seem to matter to the mainstream media that evidence has mounted into the
stratosphere that Trump has been right all along about his campaign being illegally surveilled
by the Obama administration. It doesn't matter that Trump survived a two-plus year
investigation by a special counsel and was cleared of any kind of collusion with the Russians.
The Democrats and their agents in the Deep State know that whatever they do to harass Trump
will be treated as noble and patriotic by the corrupt media, and that whenever evidence
surfaces of their criminal behavior it will be promptly buried again.
Which brings us to the infamous handwritten notes by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok about
a White House meeting that surfaced in a recent filing in the Flynn case. Strzok had already
earned a prominent place in the "Wish I Hadn't Done That" Hall of Fame for his serial
confession via text message of not just marital infidelity but also constitutional perfidy. But
the half-page of notes released by Flynn's defense team rises to the level of a
history-altering "Oops!" Indeed, it could well be the Rosetta stone that allows us to penetrate
the secrets of the anti-Trump conspiracy that stretched from the FBI to the CIA, the Justice
Department and the White House.
What we know about the provenance of the notes comes from Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell,
who said they were written by Strzok about a meeting that took place on Jan. 4, 2017. The only
problem is that the cast of characters in the memo duplicates those who were in attendance at
the White House on Jan. 5, 2017, to discuss how the Obama administration should proceed in its
dealings with Flynn, who was accused of playing footsie with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak
prior to assuming his official role as national security adviser. Attorney General William Barr
has gone on the record (on the "Verdict With Ted Cruz" podcast) that the notes actually
describe the Jan. 5 meeting.
If so, the notes strongly contradict Susan Rice's CYA "memo to self" where the Obama
national security adviser recounts the Jan. 5 meeting and stresses three times that President
Obama and his team were handling the Flynn investigation "by the book." Methinks the lady doth
protest too much, especially now that we have Strzok's contemporaneous notes to contradict her
memo, which suspiciously was written in the final minutes of the Obama administration as Donald
Trump was being sworn in at the Capitol.
From what we can tell, Strzok (unlike Rice) was not writing his memo to protect anyone. He
seems to have merely jotted down some notes about what various participants in the meeting
said, including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Rice, Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates and Strzok's boss -- FBI Director James Comey. Chances are, at this point Strzok had no
idea his dirty laundry was going to be aired or that his role as a master of the universe was
going to be toppled.
But to see the importance of these notes, we need to transcribe them from the cryptic
handwritten notes. Words and phrases that are outright guesses are reproduced in brackets.
Speakers are noted at the beginning of each line. "NSA" stands for Rice. "D" stands for Comey.
"DAG" stands for Yates. "VP" stands for Biden. "P" stands for Obama. "Cuts" is said to refer to
summaries of phone calls monitored under a FISA warrant to collect foreign intelligence.
NSA - D - DAG: Flynn cuts. Other [countries].
D - DAG: Lean forward on [illegible, but possibly "ambass" as in ambassador. Others have
speculated on "useless" or "unless," which don't fit the context, or "unclass" as in
"unclassified" or even a name beginning with m. We just don't know.]
VP: "Logan Act"
P: These are unusual times
VP: I've been on the Intel Committee for 10 years and I never
P: Make sure you look at thing[s] + have the right people on it
P: Is there anything I shouldn't be telling transition team?
D: Flynn -- > Kislyak calls but appear legit.
[Apple][??] - Happy New Year - Yeah right
The reasons why these nine lines are so important have been adequately explored by other
writers on most of the relevant topics. Most significantly from a political point of view is
confirmation that Biden lied when he said he had nothing to do with the criminal prosecution of
Flynn. The Logan Act is a more than 200-year-old statute that forbids ordinary Americans from
negotiating with foreign governments that have a dispute with the United States. No one has
ever been convicted under the law, and Flynn was not an ordinary American, but rather the
incoming national security adviser; nonetheless it was a central plank in the plan to give
Flynn enough rope to hang himself. The fact that quotes appear only around the words Logan Act
suggest that this was a direct quote from Biden.
In addition, the order by Obama presumably to Comey to "have the right people on it"
suggests that there was a political element to the investigation and that the president wanted
loyalists to handle it. What other explanation is there? Who exactly are the "wrong people" in
the FBI? (That's a rhetorical question. Obviously the wrong people were Strzok, Comey and their
buddies at the FBI and CIA who were wiretapping honest Americans and framing a president.)
Finally, and most importantly for Flynn and his attorneys, we have a contemporaneous account
of the FBI director assuring the president that Flynn's conversations with Kislyak were
"legit." In that case, why did Strzok reveal in an instant message on Jan. 4, 2017, the day
before this historic meeting, that the FBI agent in charge should NOT close the case against
Flynn even though it should have already been closed because no evidence had accrued against
him? If Comey thought the general's conversations with Kislyak were "legit," then why did
Strzok tell another FBI contact that the "7th floor [was] involved" in the decision to keep the
Flynn case alive. The seventh floor being where the offices of Comey and the rest of the top
FBI brass are located. Strzok was ecstatic to find out that the case had "serendipitously" not
been closed, and told his girlfriend Lisa Page, "Our utter incompetence actually helps us."
There seems to be no consensus among analysts about the context of Strzok's notes. According
to Rice's independent recollection of the Jan. 5 meeting, only the principals named above were
present. CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had
already been booted out of the meeting after giving a briefing on alleged Russian election
interference. It seems unlikely that Strzok would have been present in any capacity.
Andrew McCarthy at
National Review speculates that "Strzok's notes were taken when someone later briefed him
about the White House meeting that Strzok did not attend." The New
York Post concludes that the Strzok memo is "plainly Strzok's notes of FBI chief Jim
Comey's account." Certainly if Strzok were briefed by someone in attendance, it was most likely
Comey. But Ivan Pentchoukov of
The Epoch Times floats a much more interesting idea about how Strzok came to be in
possession of the facts he recorded in the memo.
"The on-the-fly nature of the notes suggest that he was either physically present or
listened in on a conference call," Pentchoukov speculates.
Well, the
Washington Post reports that "Strzok's lawyer told The Fact Checker that Strzok did not
attend the meeting," and then suggests that probably means "the notes may recount what someone
else - perhaps Comey - told him about the meeting." Yes, maybe so, but there is good reason not
to skate over the possibility that, as Pentchoukov puts it, Strzok "listened in" on the
conversation.
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This is indeed heady stuff, as it is beyond reason to think that Strzok was an invited
participant. The last thing anyone at that meeting would want is an independent account of what
was said as they planned how to entrap one of the incoming president's closest aides. Yet that
does not eliminate the chance that Strzok benefited from some kind of surveillance technique to
eavesdrop on the conversation, either with the knowledge of one person in the room or possibly
with none. Of course it is scary to think that the FBI was wiretapping the White House, but
they did it to Trump Tower, so who knows?
It is the nature of the notes themselves that lends credence to this speculation. If they
were written after the fact to memorialize a conversation Strzok had with Comey or someone
else, there is no way to account for the brevity and choppiness of the account. Rather than
just put "Logan Act" next to VP, an after-the-fact recitation would have been more likely to
specify, "The Vice President brought up the Logan Act as one statute that could be used to
prosecute Flynn's dangerous dealings with the Russian ambassador." And most suspiciously, there
is no explanation for why Strzok would have cut off the end of Biden's other contribution to
the conversation. "I've been on the Intel Committee for 10 years and I never," the transcript
goes. "Never what?" the reader wants to know.
Of course we can add the words ourselves: "Never heard of anyone being prosecuted for
talking to a foreign leader, especially not if they had a legitimate interest in establishing
relations with their counterpart prior to a new president taking office." If Strzok were making
leisurely notes while talking to his boss, or especially if he had gone back to his own office
and thought it worthwhile to record what he had been told, would it make any sense for him to
stop in mid-sentence?
No, it wouldn't. It only makes sense if, as Pentchoukov describes it, the notes were written
"on the fly." Certainly not with a tape recorder running, where one could establish an exact
transcript, but hurriedly, sloppily, furtively. That would also explain why the handwriting is
not exactly consistent with other known samples of Strzok's script. Presumably, the FBI has
validated the handwriting as Strzok's, but does the FBI have any reason to lie about that?
Hmm.
Ultimately, if Strzok is indeed the author, we need him to testify under oath exactly what
is in the notes, and how they came to be written. Hopefully the FBI, the attorney general or
someone else will declassify the extensive redactions above and below the nine lines that were
released. One has to imagine that in those passages, Strzok revealed his source for the
material quoted, as well as confirming the date of the meeting, and possibly the reason for the
meeting. He has quite a tale to tell -- one that could change history.
If there were even one Republican senator in charge of a committee who had the curiosity of
a 3-year-old, it is likely we could actually get to the bottom of the shenanigans that nearly
toppled a president and finally pin the "tale" on the donkey -- the Democratic donkey that
is.
But Republican senators in an election year have better things to do than protect and defend
the Constitution. There are fundraisers to attend, after all.
Last week Turkey brought two MIM-23 Hawk air defense systems to the al-Watiyah Airbase.
Last night they were bombed by either French, UAE, Egyptian or Russian mercenary airplanes.
Officially the LNA (Hafter) has taken responsibility for the bombing. Whoever did this had a
message to Turkey: Stop trying to break our red lines.
Thanks for the link to the Egypt/Libya article, b. It's a rare insight into the
often-hidden complexities behind armed conflict. Thanks too for Caitlin J's opinion of
AmeriKKKa's two Right-wing Crank parties. She makes it easier to laugh about their un-funny
antics.
Slightly off topic, but I think Caitlin could be onto something worthwhile with her Utopia
Prepper meme (whether she invented it or not). The way things are going, Hell could freeze
over before sanity emerges in Western Political circles. Prompted by her optimism, I intend
to devote an hour every Sunday afternoon to Utopia Prepping and contemplate the many
potential delights which a mildly more Utopian world would facilitate. There's way too much
negative thinking at present and it's NOT accidental. We'll never get to Utopia if we don't
plan what we'll do when we arrive...
Last week Turkey brought two MIM-23 Hawk air defense systems to the al-Watiyah Airbase. Last
night they were bombed by either French, UAE, Egyptian or Russian mercenary airplanes.
Officially the LNA (Hafter) has taken responsibility for the bombing. Whoever did this had a
message to Turkey: Stop trying to break our red lines.
It's been nearly four years since the myth of Trump-Russia collusion made its debut in
American politics, generating an endless stream of stories in the corporate press and hundreds
of allegations of conspiracy from pundits and officials. But despite netting scores of
embarrassing admissions, corrections, editor's notes and retractions in that time, the theory
refuses to die.
Over the years, the highly elaborate "Russiagate" narrative has fallen away piece-by-piece.
Claims about Donald Trump's various back channels to Moscow -- Carter Page ,
George Papadopoulos ,
Michael Flynn ,
Paul Manafort ,
Alfa Bank -- have each been thoroughly discredited. House Intelligence Committee
transcripts released in May have revealed that nobody who asserted a Russian hack on Democratic
computers, including the
DNC's own cyber security firm , is able to produce evidence that it happened. In fact, it
is now clear the entire investigation into the Trump campaign was
without basis .
It was alleged that Moscow manipulated the president with " kompromat " and black mail,
sold to the public in a " dossier " compiled by a former British
intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. Working through a DC consulting firm , Steele was hired by
Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump, gathering a litany of accusations that Steele's own primary
source would later dismiss as "hearsay" and "rumor."
Though the FBI was
aware the dossier was little more than sloppy opposition research, the bureau nonetheless
used it to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.
Even the claim that Russia helped Trump from afar, without direct coordination, has fallen
flat on its face. The "
troll farm " allegedly tapped by the Kremlin to wage a pro-Trump meme war -- the Internet
Research Agency -- spent only $46,000 on Facebook ads, or around 0.05 percent
of the $81 million budget of the Trump and Clinton campaigns. The vast majority of the IRA's
ads had nothing to do with U.S. politics, and more than half of those that did were published
after the election, having no impact on voters. The Department of Justice, moreover,
has dropped its charges
against the IRA's parent company, abandoning a major case resulting from Robert Mueller's
special counsel probe.
Though few of its most diehard proponents would ever admit it, after four long years, the
foundation of the Trump-Russia narrative has finally given way and its edifice has crumbled.
The wreckage left behind will remain for some time to come, however, kicking off a new era of
mainstream McCarthyism and setting the stage for the next Cold War.
It Didn't Start With
Trump
The importance of Russiagate to U.S. foreign policy cannot be understated, but the road to
hostilities with Moscow stretches far beyond the current administration. For thirty years, the
United States has
exploited its de facto victory in the first Cold War, interfering in Russian elections in
the 1990s, aiding oligarchs as they looted the country into poverty, and orchestrating Color
Revolutions in former Soviet states. NATO, meanwhile, has been enlarged up to Russia's border,
despite American assurances the alliance wouldn't expand "
one inch " eastward after the collapse of the USSR.
Unquestionably, from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the day Trump took office, the United
States maintained an aggressive policy toward Moscow. But with the USSR wiped off the map and
communism defeated for good, a sufficient pretext to rally the American public into another
Cold War has been missing in the post-Soviet era. In the same 30-year period, moreover,
Washington has pursued one disastrous
diversion after another in the Middle East, leaving little space or interest for another
round of brinkmanship with the Russians, who were relegated to little more than a talking
point. That, however, has changed.
The Crisis They Needed
The Washington foreign policy establishment -- memorably dubbed "
the Blob " by one Obama adviser -- was thrown into disarray by Trump's election win in the
fall of 2016. In some ways, Trump stood out as the dove during the race, deeming "endless wars"
in the Middle East a scam, calling for closer ties with Russia, and even questioning the
usefulness of NATO. Sincere or not, Trump's campaign vows shocked the Beltway think tankers,
journalists, and politicos whose worldviews (and salaries) rely on the maintenance of empire.
Something had to be done.
In the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks
published thousands of emails belonging to then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, her
campaign manager, and the Democratic National Committee. Though damaging to Clinton, the leak
became fodder for a powerful new attack on the president-to-be. Trump had worked in league with
Moscow to throw the election, the story went, and the embarrassing email trove was stolen in a
Russian hack, then passed to WikiLeaks to propel Trump's campaign.
By the time Trump took office, the narrative was in full swing. Pundits and politicians
rushed to outdo one another in hysterically denouncing the supposed election-meddling, which
was deemed the "political equivalent" of the 9/11
attacks , tantamount to
Pearl Harbor , and akin to the Nazis' 1938
Kristallnacht pogrom. In lock-step with the U.S. intelligence community -- which soon
issued a
pair of reports endorsing the Russian hacking
story -- the Blob quickly joined the cause, hoping to short-circuit any tinkering with NATO or
rapprochement with Moscow under Trump.
The allegations soon broadened well beyond hacking. Russia had now waged war on American
democracy itself, and "sowed discord" with misinformation online, all in direct collusion with
the Trump campaign. Talking heads on cable news and former intelligence officials -- some of
them playing both
roles at once -- weaved a dramatic plot of conspiracy out of countless news reports,
clinging to many of the "bombshell" stories long after their key claims were
blown up .
A
large segment of American society eagerly bought the fiction, refusing to believe that
Trump, the game show host, could have defeated Clinton without assistance from a foreign power.
For the first time since the fall of the USSR, rank-and-file Democrats and moderate
progressives were aligned with some of the most vocal Russia hawks across the aisle, creating
space for what many have called a " new Cold War. "
Stress Fractures
Under immense pressure and nonstop allegations, the candidate who shouted "America First"
and slammed NATO as "
obsolete " quickly adapted himself to the foreign policy consensus on the alliance, one of
the first signs the Trump-Russia story was bearing fruit.
Demonstrating the Blob in action, during debate on the Senate floor over Montenegro's bid to
join NATO in March 2017, the hawkish John McCain castigated Rand Paul for daring to oppose the
measure, riding on anti-Russian sentiments stoked during the election to accuse him of "working for Vladimir
Putin." With most lawmakers agreeing the expansion of NATO was needed to "push back" against
Russia, the Senate approved the request nearly
unanimously and Trump signed it without batting an eye -- perhaps seeing the attacks a veto
would bring, even from his own party.
Allowing Montenegro -- a country that illustrates everything wrong with
NATO -- to join the alliance may suggest Trump's criticisms were always empty talk, but the
establishment's drive to constrain his foreign policy was undoubtedly having an effect. Just a
few months later, the administration would put out its National
Security Strategy , stressing the need to refocus U.S. military engagements from
counter-terrorism in the Middle East to "great power competition" with Russia and China.
On another aspiring NATO member, Ukraine, the president was also hectored into reversing
course under pressure from the Blob. During the 2016 race, the corporate press savaged the
Trump campaign for working behind the scenes to " water down " the Republican Party platform after it opposed a
pledge to arm Ukraine's post-coup government. That stance did not last long.
Though even Obama decided against arming the new government -- which his administration
helped to install
-- Trump reversed that move in late 2017, handing Kiev hundreds of Javelin anti-tank missiles.
In an irony noticed by
few , some of the arms went to
open neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian military, who were integrated into the country's National
Guard after leading street battles with security forces in the Obama-backed coup of 2014. Some
of the very same Beltway critics slamming the president as a racist demanded he pass weapons to
out-and-out white supremacists.
Ukraine's
bid to join NATO has all but stalled under President Volodymyr Zelensky, but the country
has nonetheless played an outsized role in American politics both before and after Trump took
office. In the wake of Ukraine's 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup, "Russian aggression" became a
favorite slogan in the American press, laying the ground for future allegations of
election-meddling.
Weaponizing Ukraine
The drive for renewed hostilities with Moscow got underway well before Trump took the Oval
Office, nurtured in its early stages under the Obama administration. Using Ukraine's revolution
as a springboard, Obama launched a major rhetorical and policy offensive against Russia,
casting it in the role of an aggressive ,
expansionist power.
Protests erupted in Ukraine in late 2013, following President Viktor Yanukovych's refusal to
sign an association agreement with the European Union, preferring to keep closer ties with
Russia. Demanding a deal with the EU and an end to government corruption, demonstrators --
including the above-mentioned neo-Nazis -- were soon in the streets clashing with security
forces. Yanukovych was chased out of the country, and eventually out of power.
Through cut-out organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, the Obama
administration poured millions of
dollars into the Ukrainian opposition prior to the coup, training, organizing and funding
activists. Dubbed the "Euromaidan Revolution," Yanukovych's ouster mirrored similar US-backed
color coups before and since, with Uncle Sam riding on the back of legitimate grievances while
positioning the most
U.S.-friendly figures to take power afterward.
The coup set off serious unrest in Ukraine's Russian-speaking enclaves, the eastern Donbass
region and the Crimean Peninsula to the south. In the Donbass, secessionist forces attempted
their own revolution, prompting the new government in Kiev to launch a bloody "war on terror"
that continues to this day. Though the separatists received some level of support from Moscow,
Washington placed sole blame on the Russians for Ukraine's unrest, while the press breathlessly
predicted an all-out invasion that never materialized.
In Crimea -- where Moscow has kept its Black Sea Fleet since the late 1700s -- Russia took a
more forceful stance, seizing the territory to keep control of its long term naval base. The
annexation was accomplished without bloodshed, and a referendum was held weeks later affirming
that a large majority of Crimeans supported rejoining Russia, a sentiment
western polling firms have since
corroborated . Regardless, as in the Donbass, the move was labeled an invasion, eventually
triggering a raft of sanctions from the
U.S. and the EU (and more
recently, from
Trump himself ).
The media made no effort to see Russia's perspective on Crimea in the wake of the revolution
-- imagining the U.S. response if the roles were reversed, for example -- and all but ignored
the preferences of Crimeans. Instead, it spun a black-and-white story of "Russian aggression"
in Ukraine. For the Blob, Moscow's actions there put Vladimir Putin on par with Adolf Hitler,
driving a flood of frenzied press coverage not seen again until the 2016
election.
Succumbing to Hysteria
While Trump had already begun to cave to the onslaught of Russiagate in the early months of
his presidency, a July 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki presented an opportunity to reverse
course, offering a venue to hash out differences and plan for future cooperation. Trump's
previous sit-downs with his Russian counterpart were largely uneventful, but widely portrayed
as a meeting between master and puppet. At the Helsinki Summit, however, a meager gesture
toward improved relations was met with a new level of hysterics.
Trump's refusal to interrogate Putin on his supposed election-hacking during a summit press
conference was taken as irrefutable proof that the two were conspiring together. Former CIA
Director John Brennan declared it an
act of treason , while CNN gravely
contemplated whether Putin's gift to Trump during the meetings -- a World Cup soccer ball
-- was really a secret spying transmitter. By this point, Robert Mueller's special counsel
probe was in full effect, lending official credibility to the collusion story and further
emboldening the claims of conspiracy.
Though the summit did little to strengthen U.S.-Russia ties and Trump made no real effort to
do so -- beyond resisting the calls to directly confront Putin -- it brought on some of the
most extreme attacks yet, further ratcheting up the cost of rapprochement. The window of
opportunity presented in Helsinki, while only cracked to begin with, was now firmly shut, with
Trump as reluctant as ever to make good on his original policy platform.
Sanctions!
After taking a beating in Helsinki, the administration allowed tensions with Moscow to soar
to new heights, more or less embracing the Blob's favored policies and often even outdoing the
Obama government's hawkishness toward Russia in both rhetoric and action.
In March 2018, the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in the United Kingdom was blamed
on Moscow in a highly
elaborate storyline that ultimately fell
apart (sound familiar?), but nonetheless triggered a wave of retaliation from western
governments. In the largest diplomatic purge in US history, the Trump administration expelled
60 Russian officials in a period of two days, surpassing Obama's ejection of 35 diplomats in
response to the election-meddling allegations.
Though Trump had called to lift rather
than impose penalties on Russia before taking office, worn down by endless negative press
coverage and surrounded by a coterie of hawkish advisers, he was brought around on the merits
of sanctions before long, and has used them liberally ever since.
Goodbye INF, RIP
OST
By October 2018, Trump had largely abandoned any idea of improving the relationship with
Russia and, in addition to the barrage of sanctions, began shredding a series of major treaties
and arms control agreements. He started with the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty (INF), which had eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons -- medium-range missiles
-- and removed Europe as a theater for nuclear war.
At this point in Trump's tenure, super-hawk John Bolton had assumed the position of national
security advisor, encouraging the president's worst instincts and using his newfound influence
to convince Trump to ditch the INF treaty. Bolton -- who helped to detonate a number of arms control
pacts in previous administrations -- argued that Russia's new short-range missile had
violated the treaty. While there remains some dispute over the missile's true range and whether
it actually breached the agreement, Washington failed to pursue available dispute mechanisms
and ignored Russian offers for talks to resolve the spat.
After the U.S. officially scrapped the agreement, it quickly began testing formerly-banned
munitions. Unlike the Russian missiles, which were only said to have a range overstepping the
treaty by a few miles, the U.S. began testing nuclear-capable land-based cruise
missiles expressly banned under the INF.
Next came the Open Skies Treaty (OST), an idea originally floated by President Eisenhower,
but which wouldn't take shape until 1992, when an agreement was struck between NATO and former
Warsaw Pact nations. The agreement now has over 30 members and allows each to arrange
surveillance flights over other members' territory, an important confidence-building measure in
the post-Soviet world.
Trump saw matters differently, however, and turned a minor dispute over Russia's
implementation of the pact into a reason to discard it altogether, again egged on by militant
advisers. In late May 2020, the president declared
his intent to withdraw from the nearly 30-year-old agreement, proposing nothing to replace
it.
Quid Pro Quo
With the DOJ's special counsel probe into Trump-Russia collusion
coming up short on both smoking-gun evidence and relevant indictments, the president's
enemies began searching for new angles of attack. Following a July 2019 phone call between
Trump and his newly elected Ukrainian counterpart, they soon found one.
During the call ,
Trump urged Zelensky to investigate a computer server he believed to be linked to Russiagate,
and to look into potential
corruption and nepotism on the part of former Vice President Joe Biden, who played an
active role in Ukraine following the Obama-backed coup.
Less than two months later, a " whistleblower
" -- a CIA officer detailed to the White House, Eric Ciaramella -- came forward with an "urgent
concern" that the president had abused his office on the July call. According to his
complaint , Trump threatened to withhold U.S. military aid, as well as a face-to-face
meeting with Zelensky, should Kiev fail to deliver the goods on Biden, who by that point was a
major contender in the 2020 race.
The same players who peddled Russiagate seized on Ciaramella's account to manufacture a
whole new scandal: "Ukrainegate." Failing to squeeze an impeachment out of the Mueller probe,
the Democrats did just that with the Ukraine call, insisting Trump had committed grave
offenses, again conspiring with a foreign leader to meddle in a U.S. election.
At a high point during the impeachment trial, an expert called to testify by the Democrats
revived George W.
Bush's "fight them over there" maxim to
argue for U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine, citing the Russian menace. The effort was doomed
from the start, however, with a GOP-controlled Senate never likely to convict and the evidence
weak for a "quid pro quo" with Zelensky. Ukrainegate, like Russiagate before it, was a failure
in its stated goal, yet both served to mark the administration with claims of foreign collusion
and press for more hawkish policies toward Moscow.
The End of New START?
The Obama administration scored a rare diplomatic achievement with Russia in 2010, signing
the New START Treaty, a continuation of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty inked in
the waning days of the Soviet Union. Like its first iteration, the agreement places a cap on
the number of nuclear weapons and warheads deployed by each side. It featured a ten-year sunset
clause, but included provisions to continue beyond its initial end date.
With the treaty set to expire in early 2021, it has become an increasingly hot topic
throughout Trump's presidency. While Trump sold himself as an expert dealmaker on the campaign
trail -- an artist , even -- his negotiation
skills have shown lacking when it comes to working out a new deal with the Russians.
The administration has
demanded that China be incorporated into any extended version of the treaty, calling on
Russia to compel Beijing to the negotiating table and vastly complicating any prospect for a
deal. With a nuclear arsenal around one-tenth the size of that of Russia or the U.S., China has
refused to join the pact. Washington's intransigence on the issue has put the future of the
treaty in limbo and largely left Russia without a negotiating partner.
A second Trump term would spell serious trouble for New START, having already shown
willingness to shred the INF and Open Skies agreements. And with the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty (ABM) already killed under the Bush administration, New START is one of the few
remaining constraints on the planet's two largest nuclear arsenals.
Despite pursuing massive escalation with Moscow from 2018 onward, Trump-Russia conspiracy
allegations never stopped pouring from newspapers and TV screens. For the Blob -- heavily
invested in a narrative as fruitful as it was false -- Trump would forever be "Putin's puppet,"
regardless of the sanctions imposed, the landmark treaties incinerated or the deluge of warlike
rhetoric.
Running for an Arms Race
As the Trump administration leads the country into the next Cold War, a renewed arms race is
also in the making. The destruction of key arms control pacts by previous administrations has
fed a proliferation powder keg, and the demise of New START could be the spark to set it
off.
Following Bush Jr.'s termination of the ABM deal in 2002 -- wrecking a pact which placed
limits on Russian and American missile defense systems to maintain the balance of mutually
assured destruction -- Russia soon resumed funding for a number of strategic weapons projects,
including its hypersonic missile. In his announcement of the new technology in
2018, Putin deemed the move a response to Washington's unilateral withdrawal from ABM, which
also saw the U.S. develop new weapons .
Though he inked New START and campaigned on vows to pursue an end to the bomb, President
Obama also helped to advance the arms build-up, embarking on a 30-year
nuclear modernization project set to cost taxpayers $1.5 trillion. The Trump administration
has embraced the initiative with open arms, even
adding to it , as Moscow follows suit with upgrades to its own arsenal.
In May, Trump's top arms control envoy promised to spend Russia and China
into oblivion in the event of any future arms race, but one was already well underway.
After withdrawing from INF, the administration began churning
out previously banned nuclear-capable cruise missiles, while fielding an entire new class
of
low-yield nuclear weapons. Known as "tactical nukes," the smaller warheads lower the
threshold for use, making nuclear conflict more likely. Meanwhile, the White House has also
mulled a live bomb test -- America's first since 1992 -- though has apparently shelved
the idea for now.
A Runaway Freight Train
As Trump approaches the end of his first term, the two major U.S. political parties have
become locked in a permanent cycle of escalation, eternally compelled to prove who's the bigger
hawk. The president put up mild resistance during his first months in office, but the
relentless drumbeat of Russiagate successfully crushed any chances for improved ties with
Moscow.
The Democrats refuse to give up on "Russian aggression" and see virtually no pushback from
hawks across the aisle, while intelligence "leaks" continue to flow into the imperial press,
fueling a whole new round of election-meddling
allegations .
Likewise, Trump's campaign vows to revamp U.S.-Russian relations are long dead. His
presidency counts among its accomplishments a pile of new sanctions, dozens of expelled
diplomats and the demise of two major arms control treaties. For all his talk of getting along
with Putin, Trump has failed to ink a single deal, de-escalate any of the ongoing strife over
Syria, Ukraine or Libya, and been unable to arrange one state visit in Moscow or DC.
Nonetheless, Trump's every action is still interpreted through the lens of Russian
collusion. After announcing a troop drawdown in Germany on June 5, reducing the U.S. presence
by just one-third, the president was met with the now-typical swarm of baseless charges. MSNBC
regular and retired general Barry McCaffrey dubbed the move "a gift to
Russia," while GOP Rep. Liz Cheney said the meager troop movement
placed the "cause of freedom in peril." Top Democrats in the House and Senate
introduced bills to stop the withdrawal dead in its tracks, attributing the policy to
Trump's "absurd affection for Vladimir Putin, a murderous dictator."
Starting as a dirty campaign trick to explain away the Democrats' election loss and jam up
the new president, Russiagate is now a key driving force in the U.S. political establishment
that will long outlive the age of Trump. After nearly four years, the bipartisan consensus on
the need for Cold War is stronger than ever, and will endure regardless of who takes the Oval
Office next.
Bartiromo's interview with Barr on
"Sunday Morning Futures," is the first time the Attorney General has given a time frame for
the information. He also noted that he was surprised by the lack of public interest in Durham's
investigation.
Unfortunately, in the opinion of this writer, the lack of public interest in the Durham
probe may have more to do with the Justice Department's secrecy to discuss the investigation
publicly and the failure – as of yet – to indict or hold many of those involved
legally accountable for their actions.
Although Barr has been the most informative on the Durham investigation during his
interviews, other Justice Department officials have been less than cooperative when asked about
developments in the probe and therefore making it less likely to garner public interest.
Durham's investigation, however, is expanding on the evidence amassed by both Congress and
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's December report. That report revealed
numerous omissions and lies in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Application on Carter
Page, a short term 2016 Trump campaign volunteer.
"So that has been surprising to me, that people aren't concerned about civil liberties and
the integrity of our governmental process in terms of the future of Durham's investigation,"
Barr said. "You know, he's pressing ahead as hard as he can. And I expect that, you know, we
will have some developments hopefully before the end of the summer." Still, Barr made it clear
that Durham's probe is expected to continue passed the November's election.
He noted one caveat, that depends "on who wins the election."
He also discussed with Bartiromo the unmasking of Trump campaign officials during the
2016 elections saying, "I would say it's unusual for an outgoing administration, high level
officials, to be unmasking very, you know, very much in the days they're preparing to leave
office. Makes you wonder what they were doing."
Attorney General William Barr is bringing increasing clarity to the focus of U.S. Attorney
John Durham's criminal investigation into the conduct of the Russia collusion
investigators.
In a series of recent interviews, the nation's chief enforcement officer has dropped some
big hints about what is under investigation, who is and isn't being investigated, and what
evidence uncovered by the Durham team is emerging as important.
Barr also has suggested what events in the timeline are emerging as important in the 2016-17
effort to find dirt on President Trump and his campaign and transition team.
Here are the seven most important revelations Barr has made over the last month.
1.
Timetable: Durham's investigation has been slowed by the pandemic. But some action is expected
by end of summer, and the probe could stretch beyond Election Day.
Barr told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that the coronavirus has slowed Durham's
ability to interview witnesses and use a grand jury if needed, though he did not officially
confirm there was grand jury activity in the case.
"It is a fact that there have not been grand juries in virtually all districts for a long
period of time," Barr said.
But most importantly, the attorney general laid out a likely timeline for when the first
actions might be taken in the case, while stressing the probe could carry beyond the
election.
"In terms of the future of Durham's investigation, he's pressing ahead as hard as he can,
and I expect that we will have some developments, hopefully before the end of the summer," Barr
said. "But as I've said, his investigation will continue. It's not going to stop because of the
election. What happens after the election may depend on who wins the election."
2. Barr
believes evidence used by the FBI to justify opening an investigation into the Trump campaign's
ties to Moscow was very thin.
The attorney general has made clear in multiple interviews that Australian diplomat
Alexander Downer's meeting with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos at a London bar in May
2016 was a weak justification for opening Crossfire Hurricane.
Downer claimed Papadopoulos made comments about Russians possessing dirt on Hillary Clinton,
and the FBI believed that was enough to predicate a counterintelligence investigation.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz agreed in his report that was enough, but found
substantial evidence the FBI cheated afterwards to keep the probe going in the absence of
evidence of wrongdoing.
Barr does not seem to accept the opening of the FBI probe was justified.
Papadopoulos' alleged "comment in a London wine bar" would be "a very slender reed to get
law enforcement and intelligence agencies involved in investigating the campaign of one's
political opponent," Barr declared Sunday.
Barr isn't the only high-profile figure to think that. Former FBI Assistant Director for
Intelligence Kevin Brock has said the FBI memo opening Crossfire Hurricane did not meet the
standards for opening a counter-intelligence investigation.
3. Investigators are focused
on what happened before Crossfire Hurricane officially started, including when Christopher
Steele first began compiling his dossier.
In multiple interviews, Barr has made clear Durham's team is examining what actions
government officials and private individuals may have taken in the winter and spring of 2016
before the FBI officially opened its probe of the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.
Perhaps the most tantalizing statement Barr has made on this came Sunday when he suggested
it was important that Steele began working on his dossier before July 2016, raising the
possibility that some unexplained events earlier that year may have been connected to that
early Steele work.
"I understand why it is important to try to determine whether there was any activity before
July, before the Papadopoulos wine bar conversation," Barr explained. "And so people are
looking at that. It's significant also that the dossier was initiated before July."
4.
Barr views the FBI's continuation of the Russia probe after the Steele dossier "collapsed" as
an illegitimate effort to remove the president.
Barr has repeatedly cited the fact that the FBI continued to rely on the Steele dossier
after the former MI6 agent's primary sub-source contradicted information in the dossier in
January 2017 and March 2017 -- and failed to tell the FISA court about the problems with the
repudiated evidence.
"The dossier pretty much collapsed at that point -- and yet they continued to use it as a
basis for pursuing this counterintelligence investigation," Barr noted this past weekend.
The attorney general suggested such behavior supports arguments that what was really going
on was an attempted coup to remove Trump from office. "It is the closest we have come to an
organized effort to push a president out of office," he said.
5. There are multiple
criminal investigations into leaks of classified information.
Barr made clear that Durham and others are examining multiple leaks for possible criminal
violations while cautioning proving leak cases can be challenging. One of those is focused on
who leaked Michael Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador.
"Leaking national defense information, unauthorized disclosure of that information is a
felony," Barr said. "We have a lot of leak investigations underway."
6. Barr is concerned
by the outgoing Obama administration's extensive unmasking of Americans' conversations ... but
don't expect Barack Obama or Joe Biden to get in trouble.
After the recent revelation that more than three dozen Obama administration officials sought
to unmask intercepted conversations of incoming Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn,
Barr declared, "It makes you wonder what they were doing."
"It's unusual for an outgoing administration, high-level officials, to be unmasking very
much in the days they're preparing to leave office," he added.
As a sign of that concern, Barr has named a U.S. attorney from Texas to assist Durham to
examine the unmaskings for any illegalities.
But Barr also tamped down any expectation that the former president or vice president will
be investigated, stating clearly they are not targets of the probe.
"As to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement, based
on the information I have today, I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a criminal
investigation of either man," the attorney general said last month. "Our concern over potential
criminality is focused on others."
7. Durham is examining whether political pressures
were applied during the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's intentions in 2016
election meddling. That could be bad news for former CIA chief John Brennan.
In the Obama administration's final days, Brennan, outgoing DNI James Clapper and then-FBI
Director James Comey release the Intelligence Community Assessment, which declared Russia
meddled in the 2016 election with hacking and Facebook ads and that Moscow's intention was to
help Trump win.
The first conclusion is widely accepted, while the second is more controversial, especially
now that evidence has been declassified showing Russia was feeding derogatory disinformation
about Trump to Steele. Why, experts wonder, would Russia be doing that if Putin wanted Trump to
win?
Barr said Durham is investigating whether any political pressure was brought to bear to come
to that second conclusion. Sources have told Just the News there is some evidence that CIA
analysts and others had concerns about the strength of the evidence about Russia's
intentions.
play_arrow Itinerant , 1 hour ago
The first conclusion is widely accepted ... declared Russia meddled in the 2016 election
with hacking and Facebook ads
And it's high time for a dose of reality.
1. There's no evidence of a hack , as CrowdStrike stated in interviews that have been
released. There is a lot of evidence that it was a leak from inside the DNC premises, and
that Guccifer is an Intelligence Agency persona.
2. There's no evidence that Putin (or his administration) directed any purported Russian
meddling campaign.
3. There's no evidence that the Facebook ads were not click bait and were ever intentioned
to cause "Division". No coherent account can be given as to what "disinformation" they were
trying to spread, and why the Russian leadership would want to spread such "disinformation".
In fact, "it was so sophisticated that it remained hidden in plain view". That's because the
whole story is just psychological projection, based on assumptions of what the Russians would
want to do (no connection to anything they've ever said). Just look at some of the examples,
and you can reach no other conclusion than: Click bait.
CallOfTheWild , 3 hours ago
The Watch Pot NEVER BOILS.....WTF
Brennan
Clapper
Comey
McCabe
Strzok
Page
Ohr
Halper
Mifsud
Baker
Preistep
Yates
Rosenstein
Obama
Wray
Simpson
Clinton x2
Weissmann
Lynch
Jarrett
Rice
Fritsch
Power
McLaughlin
Ferrante
Boomer's revenge , 6 hours ago
Un acceptable. They commited a treasonous Coup d'état with impunity, insulting and
ridiculing all of us as they did it. "Could smell the Trump voters at Walmart".
ComradeChe , 7 hours ago
There was genius in the "Russian Collision" narrative; they kept it up, incessantly, even
as it was factually falling apart. There was no link. And still they kept at it. The result
was that everyone is SICK TO DEATH of this crap. No one cares. The Trump haters gonna hate
regardless-- and everyone else, whether they back the president or not, are just over it. It
blew up in Pelosi's face-- but no one cares.
Now, most of America is three mortgage payments behind and they don't give a damn about
anything but trying to keep their lives together. Obama, Rice, Clapper, Brennan et al pulled
off the most egregious political crime in the history of the republic. Even in his wildest
dreams Tricky **** Nixon couldn't get the IRS, the NSA and the CIA to do political hits for
him. But Obama-- nails it. The trifecta: the IRS 'rogue agents from Cincinnati' stifle the
Tea Party; the FBI/CIA jerk off the FISA Court with a bought and paid for shovel full of BS,
and then use the NSA to spy on a political candidate-- and better yet, conspire with foreign
intelligence services who utilize electronic surveillance within the US, so the CIA can keep
its skirts clean; and lastly, the circular firing squad of the National Security council
facilitates the 'unmasking' of dozens of Americans who are not terrorists, or spies but
political opponents.
No this didn't happen in Guatemala. This happened in the US.
And you know what? Obama and all his minions ARE going to get away with it. Barry got away
with presenting a birth certificate cobbled together on Adobe Illustrator; they didn't even
bother to make a PDF out of it. It was BAM in your face, 23 different fonts on 15 different
layers. So what? Hillary got away with keeping hundreds of Top Secret Codeword documents on a
home made web server. So what? Then she got away with accepting a sweet &130 million
payoff for the Clinton Foundation, right after she okayed the transfer of 25% of our enriched
Uranium to... wait for it... Putin. And then the IC blames Trump for being a stooge of
Putin.
It's too rich. If you are waiting for justice, forget it. I've seen this movie before.
Arch_Stanton , 8 hours ago
1. Timetable: Durham's investigation has been slowed by the pandemic. But some action is
expected by end of summer, and the probe could stretch beyond Election Day.
There will be no action, or should I say inaction, until after the election
2. Barr believes evidence used by the FBI to justify opening an investigation into the
Trump campaign's ties to Moscow was very thin.
3. Investigators are focused on what happened before Crossfire Hurricane officially
started, including when Christopher Steele first began compiling his dossier.
4. Barr views the FBI's continuation of the Russia probe after the Steele dossier
"collapsed" as an illegitimate effort to remove the president.
This is true and we all knew this over 3 years ago.
5. There are multiple criminal investigations into leaks of classified information.
Multiple leaks? No kidding.
6. Barr is concerned by the outgoing Obama administration's extensive unmasking of
Americans' conversations ... but don't expect Barack Obama or Joe Biden to get in
trouble.
We are all far more than "concerned". This was a coup. Obama initiated this whole coup and
Biden was in on the planning and we know it. Why do they skate?
7. Durham is examining whether political pressures were applied during the intelligence
community's assessment of Russia's intentions in 2016 election meddling. That could be bad
news for former CIA chief John Brennan.
Hoping it's more than news. Hoping for indictments.
This is a joke, and I'm not surprised. If Trump loses, this whole affair will be dropped
and consigned to the memory hole immediately.
Chocura750 , 7 hours ago
Thin justification is enough considering the importance of the claim.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN , 8 hours ago
Perhaps the most tantalizing statement Barr has made on this came Sunday when he
suggested it was important that Steele began working on his dossier before July 2016,
raising the possibility that some unexplained events earlier that year may have been
connected to that early Steele work.
It was reported in real time in 2016 that the Steele Dossier work was initiated at the
request of rival Republican candidates (likely Jeb Bush, possibly Ted Cruz) and they handed
it off to the Clinton Campaign to continue. The Bush family then supported Clinton in the
election. This was a uni-party effort to keep control in the 2 families.
Gerb00 , 8 hours ago
They all skate by, no one goes to jail, they all get multi million dollar gooka dn movie
deals, mr senile and mr o-*** get nobel peace prizes and shrines where the lincoln memorial
used to be..
David Wooten , 8 hours ago
"...the attorney general laid out a likely timeline for when the first actions might be
taken in the case, while stressing the probe could carry beyond the election."
Wrongdoings by past administrations go beyond Obiden to Bush 43 or earlier and also
include most members of the Senate and a fair number in the House. They stretch from Russia
to Ukraine to Libya to Syria to the UK to France to Israel to Assange, etc. They cover
members of both parties in the US and back to Tony Blair in Britain and some very powerful
people. They are all tied together in some way.
It will take far longer than the election to get the bottom of it and, given the
anti-Trump atmosphere that prevails, Durham is unlikely to produce any unsealed indictments
before the election lest they be tainted with politics, ie, helping Trump - as Ken Starr's
report was tainted as undermining Clinton's election.
Those involved are so powerful that the best that can be expected is to remove them from
positions of power, both in and out of government. Some these guys would rather die or bring
on a nuclear war than spend years to decades in prison.
Don't hold your breath.
bumboo , 8 hours ago
Hush Hush. Durham and Barr are part of the establishment. Barr and Robert Muller are
friends (attend same Bible class). One of them invited the other one to his daughter's
wedding (nothing wrong). Part of the Cabal.
Durham investigated the Guantanamo tapes burning by a CIA officer and wrote the per
someone's instructions. The author is assuming that his readers are fools and lazy. Sorry,
those days are gone, thanks to alternate Media and citizen's journalism or empowerment. We
dont have relay journalists in their rocking chair and writing superficial stuff. Did the
writer address Joseph Misfud, the Maltese guy.
There is sufficient information in the public sphere, including inculpatory evidence that
would be more than sufficient to produce indictments. The fact that Trump's AG drags his feet
on this within months of the election suggests Trump continues to waffle and go soft in the
knees when it matters most. In spite of talking a big game, Trump is a softie.
He might be an incredibly sophisticated media manipulator, and good for him, but I'm not
really sure he understands that this burgeoning insurrection, including the complex campaign
to unseat him during his presidency, constitutes an insurgency against the Constitutional
Republic.
This makes the agents within the Deep State traitors, the executing agents acting in the
streets insurrectionists and BLM potentially foreign agents. Trump and his team seem to think
this is all just disgruntled political opposition. IT's nothing of the sort.
The belated discovery of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok's January 2017 notes raises
troubling new questions about whether President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were
coordinating efforts during their final days in office to investigate Trump national security
adviser Michael Flynn -- even as the FBI wanted to shut down the case.
Investigators will need to secure testimony from Strzok, fired two years ago from the FBI,
to be certain of the exact meaning and intent of his one paragraph of notes, which were made
public in court on Wednesday.
But they appear to illuminate an extraordinary high-level effort by outgoing Obama-era
officials during the first weekend of January to find a way to sustain a counterintelligence
investigation of Flynn in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing.
The Justice Department says the notes were written between Jan. 3-5, 2017, the very weekend
the FBI agent who had investigated Flynn's ties to Russia for five months recommended the case
be closed because there was "no derogatory" evidence that he committed a crime or posed a
counterintelligence threat. FBI supervisors overruled the agent's recommendation.
Strzok's notes appear to quote then-FBI Director James Comey as suggesting that Flynn's
intercepted calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak "appear legit," bolstering other
recently disclosed evidence showing the bureau saw nothing wrong with Flynn's behavior.
The notes also suggest Biden -- who once claimed he had no knowledge of the Flynn probe --
raised the issue of the Logan Act, an obscure, centuries-old law, as a possible avenue for
continuing to investigate Flynn.
And Strzok appears to quote Obama as suggesting the FBI assign "the right people" to pursue
the case.
You can read the notes here:
These conversations, if accurately portrayed in the Strzok notes, occurred during the same
three-day period in which FBI supervisors overruled their field agent's recommendation to shut
down the Flynn case and pivoted toward the strategy of luring Flynn into an FBI interview where
he might be caught lying.
Sidney Powell, Flynn's lawyer, laid out the potential ramifications of the notes in a court
filing on Wednesday, calling the new evidence "stunning and exculpatory."
"Mr. Obama himself directed that 'the right people' investigate General Flynn. This caused
former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn's phone calls with
Ambassador Kislyak 'appear legit,'" Powell argued in her new motion.
" According to Strzok's notes, it appears that Vice President Biden personally raised the
idea of the Logan Act. That became an admitted pretext to investigate General Flynn," she
added.
Even if the rebuked judge appeals the decision or the full appeals court reconsiders the
case, Flynn is likely on a path to being a free and innocent man.
The real impact of the notes may be on the Justice Department's ongoing investigation of the
Russia investigators, where U.S. Attorneys John Durham and Jeff Jensen are determining whether
the FBI or others committed crimes in deceiving the courts or Congress about the evidence in
the now-discredited Russia collusion allegations.
A former senior FBI official told Just the News that Strzok's notes about the White House
meeting are a red flag that the Comey-led bureau may have been involving itself illegitimately
in a political dispute between the outgoing Obama administration and incoming Trump
administration.
"It was a political meeting about a policy dispute, and the bureau had no business being
involved," Former Assistant Director for Intelligence Kevin Brock said. "No other FBI director
would ever have attended such a meeting.
"Comey is quoted in the notes as saying the Kislyak call appeared legit. At that point he
should have gotten up and left the room," Brock added.
"The FBI had no business being represented in that meeting. It did not have a
counterintelligence interest any longer."
A second impact of the notes could be on the campaign trail. A few months ago, Biden claimed
he was unaware of the Flynn probe as he was leaving the VP's office.
"I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn," he said.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Yrblo64caA
He then clarified his denial.
"I was aware that they asked for an investigation,"
Biden said. "But that's all I know about it, and I don't think anything else."
If Powell's interpretation of the notes is correct, Biden was knowledgeable enough to
suggest a possible pretext for continued investigation, the Logan Act. And he eventually
unmasked one of Flynn's intercepted phone calls a week later.
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told Just the News on Wednesday the
newly discovered notes affirm his long-held suspicion that the Obama White House was trying to
influence the FBI's Russia probe in untoward ways.
" Now we know both Obama and Biden were directly involved in planning the attack on Flynn
," Nunes said.
"The Obama administration exploited our intelligence community to spy on their political
opponents and engineer bogus investigations and prosecutions of them.
"This is the single biggest abuse of power I've seen in my lifetime," he added.
divideand conquer 1. To gain or maintain power by generating tension among others, especially those less powerful,
so that they cannot unite in opposition.
Notable quotes:
"... In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I'm hoping I can say something new. ..."
"... The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy. ..."
"... Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity. ..."
"... If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump. ..."
I've been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment.
In its most
general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that
members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But "fairer" can mean lots of different
things. I'm trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal,
but I'm hoping I can say something new.
You missed one important line of critique -- identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism's
radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into
identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting
through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes
harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals -- likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism,
which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and
marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for
a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies.
As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary
neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means is that
some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they
then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies
of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals
claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better
than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan
for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in
Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has
shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi
government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy
but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups.
On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand
human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers
largely assumed that all good things would go together -- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening
China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal
through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political
system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump
had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing
of the Democratic Party ("soft neoliberals") many things became much more clear. Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members,
who in 2016 "en mass" defected to Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so
of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with
Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the
"soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.
The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable
to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups,
such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals,
etc)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and
can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal
ideology. And they can't be solved within this framework.
A Senate committee approved subpoenas Thursday for more than 50 mostly Obama-era officials
in a dramatic escalation of the investigation into origins of the Trump-Russia collusion
probe.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is
wielding the subpoena power, said the move will finally put on the hot seat top officials,
including former FBI Director James B. Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
"Comey and McCabe and that whole crowd -- their day is coming," Mr. Graham said.
Others targeted for subpoenas are former National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper,
former CIA chief John O. Brennan, former Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, former Deputy
Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and FBI officials Lisa
Page, Peter Strzok, James Baker and Bill Priestap.
The panel's politically charged inquiry has the potential to rewrite the Russia collusion
narrative that until recently dominated Washington and colored voters' views of the Justice
Department and the Obama administration, in which presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
Joseph R. Biden served as vice president.
Democrats said the investigation is a fishing expedition intended to smear President Trump's
political enemies as the campaign season heats up.
"Never has a chairman devoted the full weight of this committee's resources to pursue a
wholly partisan investigation after being prompted by a presidential campaign," said Sen.
Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and a panel member.
The committee's probe also is a response to public pressure from Trump supporters who are
frustrated with the lack of accountability for top officials at the FBI and Justice Department
who publicly pushed the unsubstantiated collusion accusations.
Accusations of collusion with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election dogged Mr.
Trump since he took office and fueled Democrats' charges that he occupies the Oval Office
illegitimately.
Most of Mr. Trump's term was conducted under the cloud of special counsel Robert Mueller's
Russia investigation, which failed to dig up evidence of collusion or charge any Trump allies
on charges related to conspiring with Russia.
Mr. Trump calls the Russia probe a "hoax."
His supporters think it was a political hit job orchestrated by Democrats with the help of a
deep state.
In a party-line vote, Republicans on the panel granted Mr. Graham the authority to
subpoena individuals for documents and testimony about the origins of the Russia probe.
Mr. Graham has the power to subpoena "any current or former executive branch official or
employee involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation," the name of the FBI's
investigation into alleged ties to the Trump campaign and Russia.
He also has the authority to subpoena individuals involved in the dissemination of a
report by former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled a salacious but unverified
opposition-research dossier against Mr. Trump funded by the Democratic National Committee and
the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn R. Simpson and Nellie Ohr are expected to receive subpoenas for
their roles in commissioning and distributing the dossier.
Republicans contend that mounting evidence suggests the Russia probe was not on the up and
up.
A report last year by the Justice Department inspector general found multiple errors and
omissions in the FBI's application for a court order to surveil former Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page.
The omissions, which included potentially exculpatory evidence, have raised questions
about whether Mr. Page was a political target by anti-Trump officials in the FBI before and
after the election.
Mr. Graham also wants to probe the case against former National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian
ambassador.
The Justice Department moved this year to dismiss the case after spending roughly two years
prosecuting it. The department said the FBI did not have a sufficient basis to interview Flynn
because it sought to close the case after failing to uncover wrongdoing.
Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii Democrat, accused Mr. Graham of going over "ground that has
already been covered."
In a bid to upend the subpoena vote, Democrats sought to add a series of amendments to
compel testimony and documents from Mr. Trump's allies.
Among the individuals Democrats want to be subpoenaed are former Trump fixer Michael Cohen,
former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, attorney
Rudolph W. Giuliani and Flynn.
The amendments were defeated easily in a series of party-line votes.
"The fact that you are turning down every single relevant witness tells us and tells the
world this is an irrelevant investigation," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat.
Mr. Graham clapped back that Trump associates were heavily scrutinized in the Mueller
probe.
"I don't understand why you would want to do the Mueller investigation all over again after
we've spent 2½ years and $25 million doing it," said Mr. Graham. "I'm sorry it didn't
turn out the way people liked, but it is behind us. Now we are going to look at what happened
and the misconduct involved and hold people accountable."
Under committee rules, Mr. Graham cannot issue a subpoena unilaterally. The committee
chairman can issue a subpoena only with the consent of the ranking member or a committee
vote.
Democrats said the granting of subpoena power to one person violated the committee's
bipartisan spirit. They accused Mr. Graham of trying to grant himself "unilateral subpoena
authority."
"The resolution would give the chair sole authority to issue literally hundreds of subpoenas
without any agreement from the ranking member of any committee to vote on any specific
subpoena," said Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted last week to authorize
subpoenas from individuals associated with the Russia probe. It is not clear how the two
committees will work together with similar investigations and subpoenas.
I was a bit concerned when I heard Lindsey Graham in essence exonerate Rosenstein from any guilt. The investigation has only
just begun. Anyone else get the feeling deals are being done. I mean Graham was in on it from the start wasn't he?
So He's obviously
got some sort of immunity deal to be allowed any where near such a vitally important investigation.
So it will be interesting
to see how they navigate around that one. Another big day tomorrow...I feel that General Flynn may have some interesting input
a little bit further down the track. Patriots world wide. WWG1WGA.
We know Stzrok is all over it but I fear they are looking at taking him down and sparing the other traitors. Time will tell.
In my opinion everyone involved was equally complicit. WWG1WGA UK
Trey you didn't do ANYTHING about it!!!! ALL TALK!!!! You were just on these committees as a gate keeper to ask the questions
that would produce the pre-written responses. YOU ARE COMPROMISED! Everybody watching.... Trey Gowdy KNEW this was a hoax and
DID NOTHING!
Four years ago on June 15, 2016, a shadowy Internet persona calling itself "Guccifer 2.0"
appeared out of nowhere to claim credit for hacking emails from the Democratic National
Committee on behalf of WikiLeaks and implicate Russia by dropping "telltale" but synthetically
produced Russian "breadcrumbs" in his metadata.
Thanks largely to the corporate media, the highly damaging story actually found in those DNC
emails – namely, that the DNC had stacked the cards against Bernie Sanders in the party's
2016 primary – was successfully obscured .
The media was the message; and the message was that Russia had used G-2.0 to hack into the
DNC, interfering in the November 2016 election to help Donald Trump win.
Almost everybody still "knows" that – from the man or woman in the street to the
forlorn super sleuth, Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, who actually based indictments
of Russian intelligence officers on Guccifer 2.0.
Blaming Russia was a magnificent distraction from the start and quickly became the
vogue.
The soil had already been cultivated for "Russiagate" by Democratic PR gems like Donald
Trump "kissing up" to former KGB officer Vladimir Putin and their "bromance" (bromides that
former President Barack Obama is still using). Four years ago today, "Russian meddling" was off
and running – on steroids – acquiring far more faux-reality than the evanescent
Guccifer 2.0 persona is likely to get.
Here's how it went down :
June 12: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced he had "emails related to Hillary
Clinton which are pending publication."
June 14: DNC contractor CrowdStrike tells the media that malware has been found on the
DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15: Guccifer 2.0 arises from nowhere; affirms the DNC/CrowdStrike allegations of the
day before; claims responsibility for hacking the DNC; claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and
posts a document that forensic examination shows was deliberately tainted with "Russian
fingerprints." This to "corroborate" claims made by CrowdStrike executives the day
before.
Adding to other signs of fakery, there is hard evidence that G-2.0 was operating mostly in
U.S. time zones and with local settings peculiar to a device configured for use within the US ,
as Tim Leonard reports here and here .)
Leonard is a software developer who started to catalog and archive evidence related to
Guccifer 2.0 in 2017 and has issued detailed reports on digital forensic discoveries made by
various independent researchers – as well as his own – over the past three years.
Leonard points out that WikiLeaks said it did not use any of the emails G2.0 sent it, though it
later published similar emails, opening the possibility that whoever created G2.0 knew what
WikiLeaks had and sent it duplicates with the Russian fingerprints .
As Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) told President Trump in a memorandum
of July 24, 2017, titled "Was the 'Russian Hack' an Inside Job?":
"We do not think that the June 12, 14, & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it
suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might
have been ready to publish and to 'show' that it came from a Russian hack."
We added this about Guccifer 2.0 at the time:
"The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any
independent forensics on the original 'Guccifer 2.0' material remains a mystery – as
does the lack of any sign that the 'hand-picked analysts' from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who
wrote the misnomered 'Intelligence Community' Assessment dated January 6, 2017, gave any
attention to forensics."
Guccifer 2.0 Seen As a Fraud
In our July 24, 2017 memorandum we also told President Trump that independent cyber
investigators and VIPs had determined "that the purported 'hack' of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was
not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external
storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. Information was leaked to
implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the
FBI. " [Emphasis added.].
Right. Ask the FBI. At this stage, President Trump might have better luck asking Attorney
General William Barr, to whom the FBI is accountable – at least in theory. As for Barr,
VIPs informed him in a June 5, 2020
memorandum that the head of CrowdStrike had admitted under oath on Dec. 5, 2017 that
CrowdStrike has no concrete evidence that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks on July 22,
2016 were hacked – by Russia or by anyone else. [Emphasis added.] This important
revelation has so far escaped attention in the Russia-Russia-Russia "mainstream" media
(surprise, surprise, surprise!).
Back to the Birth of G-2
It boggles the mind that so few Americans could see Russiagate for the farce it was. Most of
the blame, I suppose, rests on a thoroughly complicit Establishment media. Recall: Assange's
announcement on June 12, 2016 that he had Hillary Clinton-related emails came just six weeks
before the Democratic convention. I could almost hear the cry go up from the DNC: Houston, We
Have a Problem!
Here's how bad the problem for the Democrats was. The DNC emails eventually published by
WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, just three days before the Democratic convention, had been stolen
on May 23 and 25. This would have given the DNC time to learn that the stolen material included
documents showing how the DNC and Clinton campaign had manipulated the primaries and created a
host of other indignities, such that Sanders' chances of winning the nomination amounted to
those of a snowball's chance in the netherworld.
To say this was an embarrassment would be the understatement of 2016. Worse still, given the
documentary nature of the emails and WikiLeaks' enviable track record for accuracy, there would
be no way to challenge their authenticity. Nevertheless, with the media in full support of the
DNC and Clinton, however, it turned out to be a piece of cake to divert attention from the
content of the emails to the "act of war" (per John McCain) that the Russian "cyber attack" was
said to represent .
The outcome speaks as much to the lack of sophistication on the part of American TV
watchers, as it does to the sophistication of the Democrats-media complicity and cover-up. How
come so few could figure out what was going down?
It was not hard for some experienced observers to sniff a rat. Among the first to speak out
was fellow Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence, who immediately saw through the
Magnificent Diversion. I do not know if he fancies duck hunting, but he shot the Russiagate
canard quite dead – well before the Democratic convention was over.
Magnificent Diversion
In late July 2016, Lawrence was sickened, as he watched what he immediately recognized as a
well planned, highly significant deflection. The Clinton-friendly media was excoriating Russia
for "hacking" DNC emails and was glossing over what the emails showed ; namely, that the
Clinton Dems had pretty much stolen the nomination from Sanders.
It was already clear even then that the Democrats, with invaluable help from intelligence
leaks and other prepping to the media, had made good use of those six weeks between Assange's
announcement that he had emails "related to Hillary Clinton" and the opening of the
convention.
The media was primed to castigate the Russians for "hacking," while taking a prime role in
the deflection. It was a liminal event of historic significance, as we now know. The
"Magnificent Diversion" worked like a charm – and then it grew like Topsy.
Lawrence said he had "fire in the belly" on the morning of July 25 as the Democratic
convention began and wrote what follows pretty much "in one long, furious exhale" within 12
hours of when the media started really pushing the "the Russians-did-it"
narrative.
Below is a slightly shortened text of his
article :
"Now wait a minute, all you upper-case "D" Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your
party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink
the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into
your computers to sabotage our elections
Is this a joke? Are you kidding? Is nothing beneath your dignity? Is this how lowly you rate
the intelligence of American voters?
Clowns. Subversives. Do you know who you remind me of? I will tell you: Nixon, in his
famously red-baiting campaign – a disgusting episode – during his first run for the
Senate, in 1950. Your political tricks are as transparent and anti-democratic as his, it is
perfectly fair to say.
I confess to a heated reaction to events since last Friday [July 22] among the Democrats,
specifically in the Democratic National Committee. I should briefly explain
The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale, as one
of them put it the other day, in favor of Hillary Clinton's nomination. The prints were
everywhere – many those of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has repeatedly been accused of
anti-Sanders bias. Schultz, do not forget, co-chaired Clinton's 2008 campaign against Barack
Obama. That would be enough to disqualify her as the DNC's chair in any society that takes
ethics seriously, but it is not enough in our great country. Chairwoman she has been for the
past five years.
Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof
that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC
officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the
Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction.
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Wasserman fell from grace on Monday. Other than this, Democrats from President Obama to
Clinton and numerous others atop the party's power structure have had nothing to say, as in
nothing, about this unforgivable breach. They have, rather, been full of praise for Wasserman
Schultz. Brad Marshall, the D.N.C.'s chief financial officer, now tries to deny that his
Jew-baiting remark referred to Sanders. Good luck, Brad: Bernie is the only Jew in the
room.
The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, appeared on ABC's
"This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union" to assert that the D.N.C.'s mail was hacked "by the
Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." He knows this – knows it in a matter
of 24 hours – because "experts" – experts he will never name – have told him
so.
What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into
the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these
emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.
Is that what disturbs you, Robby? Interesting. Unsubstantiated hocus-pocus, not the
implications of these events for the integrity of Democratic nominations and the American
political process? The latter is the more pressing topic, Robby. You are far too long on
anonymous experts for my taste, Robby. And what kind of expert, now that I think of it, is able
to report to you as to the intentions of Russian hackers – assuming for a sec that this
concocted narrative has substance?
Making lemonade out of a lemon, the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it
advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then
associates Trump with its own mess – and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its
transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave).
Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no
"Russian actor" at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever
be offered persuasive evidence otherwise.
Reluctantly, I credit the Clinton campaign and the DNC with reading American paranoia well
enough such that they may make this junk stick. In a clear sign the entire crowd-control
machine is up and running, The New York Times had a long, unprofessional piece about Russian
culprits in its Monday editions. It followed Mook's lead faithfully: not one properly supported
fact, not one identified "expert," and more conditional verbs than you've had hot dinners
– everything cast as "could," "might," "appears," "would," "seems," "may." Nothing, once
again, as to the very serious implications of this affair for the American political
process.
Now comes the law. The FBI just announced that it will investigate – no, not the DNC's
fraudulent practices (which surely breach statutes), but "those who pose a threat in
cyberspace." it is the invocation of the Russians that sends me over the edge. My bones grow
weary
We must take the last few days' events as a signal of what Clinton's policy toward Russia
will look like should she prevail in November. Turning her party's latest disgrace into an
occasion for another round of Russophobia is mere preface, but in it you can read her
commitment to the new crusade.
Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This
is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed
the American code. Does this not make Hillary Clinton more than a touch Nixonian?
I am developing nitrogen bends from watching the American political spectacle. One can
hardly tell up from down. Which way for a breath of air?"
A year later Lawrence interviewed several of us VIPs, including our two former NSA technical
directors and on Aug. 9, 2017 published an
article for The Nation titled, "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC
Hack."
Lawrence wrote, "Former NSA experts, now members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (VIPs), say it wasn't a hack at all, but a leak – an inside job by someone with
access to the DNC's system."
And so it was. But, sadly, that cut across the grain of the acceptable Russia-gate narrative
at The Nation at the time. Its staff, seriously struck by the HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won)
virus, rose up in rebellion. A short time later, there was no more room at The Nation for his
independent-minded writing.
Drop-Hammer , 2 hours ago
His name was (((Seth Rich))).
zoomie92 , 1 hour ago
Direct USB download to chip or portable HD was the only way to get those download speed
shown on the file metadata. This has been proven in multiple independent ways. But the press
is filled with ******* retards - and so is the country.
Franko , 1 hour ago
Rest in Peace Mr Seth.
I believe many US officials have enough and want to tell the others about this.
Question:were they should be go to spread the news?To which country before been
assasinated?
To end like Julian Assange or like Snowden?
belogical , 2 hours ago
...Gucifer had much less to do with this than the Obama admin. They were using the
intelligence community for no good and as their crimes became visible they had to commit
bigger and bigger crimes to cover them up. In the end a large part of the DOJ, FBI and Obama
admin should be held accountable for this, but when you get this high they likely won't. You
can already see Lindsey Graham of the deep state finally holding hearing to spin the
narrative before the Durham probe becomes public. Unfortunate but only a few will get their
hands slapped and the true person, Obama who deserve to be prosecuted will likely skate.
PedroS , 2 hours ago
Crowdstrike. The owners should be in jail for their role.
Slaytheist , 2 hours ago
Crowdstrike IS Guccifer.
They were ordered by the criminal DNC org to cover the fact that the data was downloaded
internally, in order to hide the connection to the Podesta/Clinton ordered hit on person who
did it - Seth Rich.
Weedlord Bonerhitler , 3 hours ago
The computer of a DNC operative named Warren Flood was used to disseminate the Guccifer
2.0 disinfo tranche. Adam Carter had the analysis IIRC.
Giant Meteor , 3 hours ago
Always good to hear from Ray!
philipat , 39 minutes ago
Tick tock, still no indictments and soon the campaign will be in full swing so that
everything will be attacked as "political". Is Durham done?
They gaslighted the whole nation. Amazing achievement. In other words, they are a real criminal gang, a mafia. No questions about it.
This is Nixon impeachment level staff. This are people that brought us Lybia, Syria: this senile Creepy Joe.
Saagar Enjeti blasts former President Obama after it was revealed in transcripts he was the
person who told then-deputy attorney general Sally Yates about Mike Flynn's intercepted phone
call with the Russian ambassador, Joe Biden responds to Flynn claims on Good Morning
America.
"I know nothing about those moves to investigate Flynn." "These documents clearly outline that you were in a meeting at a specific
time specifically about that." "OH! I'm sorry! I thought you asked if I was INVOLVED IN IT!"
The word is "entrapment" - Years ago, one of the officers in the investigations squad said to me, "How can you claim to be
better than them, if you break the law to catch 'em?" - Now I understand what he was saying.
The corrupt and despicable charade against Flynn conducted by at least the FBI and the so
called courts of justice in the United States has destroyed any possible semblance of the
idea that there is equal justice under the law or the laughable notion that anything remotely
like a fair trial is available to anyone for any alleged offence at all.
The message contained in this prosecution and those of other Trump supporters is quite
clear: any person who attempts to assist a political candidate not approved by so called
liberals will be punished. Flynn is an example of what will happen to Trump backers in
future.
I am amazed at the staying power of SST member Robert Willmann in even reporting this
disgusting slow motion attempted lynching.
To put that another way, I now understand why suspects in the USA occasionally risk their
lives by running from Police - they reason it is unlikely they will ever receive a fair
trial.
The net effect of all these so called legal procedures is to destroy what little is left
of America's international legal reputation that reached its highest point at the Nuremberg
trials. That will not be to our advantage when, instead of shredding international treaties,
we one day seek to negotiate the same.
The FBI is the secret police working on behalf of the interests of the oligarchs. The
federal courts role is to implement and enforce the interests of the oligarchs. The Supreme
Court's role is to come up with legal mumbo jumbo to justify this tyranny of the
minority.
All the judges in this case (Sullivan, Wilkins, Rao) as merely proxy warriors, tools of
the oligarchs. It's not coincidental they are also 'people of color'. This has been the m.o.
of the oligarchs for over a hundred years. It was the Spingarn brothers (two lawyers from a
rich Jewish family) who started the NAACP with their front man, the mixed race W.E.B. Du
Bois. The first mission of the NAACP, and the task assigned to Du Bois, to destroy Booker T.
Washington who had a large following in the black community and was advocating for more
harmonious race relations. The oligarchs (Spingarns, et al.) running the NAACP needed to
silence Washington because they wanted to create more racial division to gain power and
subvert American culture. You can read more about this fascinating history in Catholic
historian E. Michael Jones' "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit" (Fidelity, 2008), pp. 679-715;
745-793; 831-843.
Here's a good interview where Jones touches on a lot of this in an interview with Dr. Kirk
Meighoo (Indo Caribbean Diaspora News): https://youtu.be/gtdWbTkBQxk
James Baker, who was general counsel for the bureau during the period surrounding the 2016
election, was welcomed by the social media giant's top lawyer Monday evening.
"Thrilled to welcome @thejimbaker to @Twitter as Deputy General Counsel. Jim is committed to
our core principles of an open internet and freedom of expression, and brings experience
navigating complex, global issues with a principled approach," said Twitter general counsel
Sean Edgett.
"Thanks @edgett!! I'm very excited to join such a great team @Twitter doing such important
work. Glad to be on board," Baker tweeted back.
The former New York senator published her
thoughts on her on Medium blog , where she appeared to endorse the Black
Lives Matter movement, something she has previously stayed well clear of doing. "George Floyd's
life mattered. Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor's lives mattered. Black lives matter," she
began by stating.
"I promise to keep fighting alongside all of you to make the United States a place where all
men and all women are treated as equals, just as we are and just as we deserve to be," she
added, positioning herself on the same side as the protestors, many of whom are demanding the
abolition of the police. Clinton commended the amazing "power of solidarity" she had seen and
promised to "speak out against white supremacy in all its forms," declaring that America is
long overdue for "an honest reckoning" with its racism problem.
However, an honest reckoning with Clinton's past unearths a myriad of troubling incidents
and positions that are difficult to square with her newfound radical antiracist stance. She
supported her husband and Joe Biden's
1994 Crime Bill that led to an explosion in mass incarceration across the country.
"The FBI agent who first interviewed Steele about his anti-Trump research in London on July
5, 2016 was aware immediately of a connection to Clinton..." Notes and emails that have been
kept so far from Senate investigators show the FBI knew from its earliest interactions with
Christopher Steele in July 2016 that his Russia research project on Donald Trump was connected
to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party .
The information, so far mentioned only glancingly and in footnotes of a Justice Department
report, could provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with the most powerful evidence yet to
confront witnesses about why the bureau concealed the political origins of Steele's work from
the FISA court.
" So far the bureau is slow-walking this stuff, " a source familiar with senators'
frustrations told Just the News. "We need to see these sort of documents before we question key
witnesses."
Chairman Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) is seeking a vote later this week to authorize subpoenas
that would compel the Christopher Wray-led FBI to produce witnesses and outstanding documents
for the committee's investigation of the Russia investigators.
The effort to acquire the original source materials began last December after DOJ Inspector
General Michael Horowitz released his explosive report blaming the FBI for 17 mistakes,
omissions and acts of misconduct in seeking a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page.
While the headlines since that report have mostly focused on FISA abuses, Senate
investigators have also zeroed in on a handful of little-noticed passages in Horowitz's
narrative that reference original FBI source documents showing what agents and supervisors knew
about Steele, the former MI6 agent, and the firm that hired him, Fusion GPS.
It wasn't until late October 2017 that the public and Congress first learned that the law
firm Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's
campaign, hired Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS research firm to have Steele delve into Trump's
Russia connections .
And FBI officials have been vague in their explanations about when they knew Steele's
research was tied to Clinton and the DNC and why they did not explicitly inform the FISA court
that the Steele dossier used to secure the warrant was funded by Trump's election opponent.
But one passage and two footnotes in Horowitz's report that have largely escaped public
attention suggest the FBI agent who first interviewed Steele about his anti-Trump research in
London on July 5, 2016 was aware immediately of a connection to Clinton and that a separate
office of the FBI passed along information from an informant by Aug. 2, 2016 that Simpson's
Fusion GPS was connected to the DNC.
For instance, the agent in London contacted an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in
the New York field office (NYFO) shortly after interviewing Steele and obtaining one of the
anti-Trump memos that made up his dossier, according to information in Horowitz's report.
The agent sought advice July 13, 2016 on how to handle the sensitive election-year
allegations from the supervisor in New York, where the FBI had already opened a probe of Page
that would eventually be assumed by Washington headquarters.
"ASAC 1's notes from his July 13 call with Handling Agent 1 closely track the contents of
Report 80, identify Simpson as a client of a law firm, and include the following: 'law firm
works for the Republican party or Hillary and will use [the information described in Report 80]
at some point,'" the Horowitz report stated. "ASAC 1 told us that he would not have made this
notation if Handling Agent 1 had not stated it to him."
Footnote 223 in the report reveals a second line of evidence that came to the FBI from a
confidential human source (CHS) suggesting the Steele-Simpson-Fusion project was tied to
Democrats. That warning was immediately sent to Agent Peter Strzok, the case agent for the
Crossfire Hurricane probe investigating whether Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016
election.
"At approximately the same time that Handling Agent 1 was reporting information about
Simpson to ASAC 1, an FBI agent from another FBI field office sent an email to his supervisor
stating that he had been contacted by a former CHS who 'was contacted recently by a colleague
who runs an investigative firm. The firm had been hired by two entities (the Democratic
National Committee as well as another individual...not name[d]) to explore Donald J. Trump's
longstanding ties to Russian entities.'"
"On or about August 2, 2016, this information was shared by a CD supervisor with the Section
Chief of CD's Counterintelligence Analysis Section I (Intel Section Chief), who provided it
that day to members of the Crossfire Hurricane team (then Section Chief Peter Strzok, SSA 1,
and the Supervisory Intel Analyst,)" the footnote adds.
Senate investigators want to see the original emails and notes from these conversations as
they plan to interrogate dozens of key witnesses in the Russia investigation about whether
there was an intentional effort by he FBI to hide from the courts and Congress the flaws in
their case, exculpatory evidence involving the Trump targets, and derogatory information about
Steele's credibility.
In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence that any Americans, including
anyone associated with the Trump campaign, colluded with Russia to influence the election.
And evidence that has since emerged shows the FBI determined early on that Steele's dossier
included debunked, uncorroborated information and possible Russian disinformation aimed at
smearing Trump , but agents proceeded anyway with their investigation.
" I presumed it was the Clinton campaign, and Glenn Simpson had indicated that . But I was
not aware of the technicality of it being the DNC that was actually the client of Perkins
Coie," Steele testified in March under questioning from lawyers for Russian bankers suing over
his research.
Steele confirmed during that testimony that his notes of a 2016 FBI meeting showed he told
agents about the Clinton connection.
Congressional investigators have now pieced together at least five instances early in the
Russia case where the FBI was warned of the political origins and motives of Steele's work but
failed to fully inform the courts.
Instead, the FBI's FISA warrant application told the judge Steele was working for a person
interested in possibly defeating Trump but without disclosing it was the opposition research
firm specifically hired by Clinton and the DNC through their law firm to find dirt on Trump in
Russia.
Senate investigators are trying to determine whether that omission was part of a larger,
intentional campaign to mislead the FISA court and Congress in order to keep the Russia
investigation going despite a lack of evidence supporting the collusion theory.
" Look, we've got to get to the bottom of this, to find out how they ended up with this
dossier, how it was believed to be accurate, when did they know it was not accurate? "
explained Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) one of the key members of the Judiciary
Committee.
If one ventures into the vast wasteland of American television it is possible to miss the
truly ridiculous content that is promoted as news by the major networks. One particular feature
of media-speak in the United States is the tendency of the professional reporting punditry to
go seeking for someone to blame every time some development rattles the National Security plus
Wall Street bubble that we all unfortunately live in. The talking heads have to such an extent
sold the conclusion that China deliberately released a lethal virus to destroy western
democracies that no one objects when Beijing is elevated from being a commercial competitor and
political adversary to an enemy of the United States. One sometimes even sees that it is all a
communist plot. Likewise, the riots taking place all across the U.S. are being milked for what
it's worth by the predominantly liberal media, both to influence this year's election and to
demonstrate how much the news oligarchs really love black people.
As is often the case, there are a number of inconsistencies in the narrative. If one looks
at the numerous photos of the protests in many parts of the country, it is clear that most of
the demonstrators are white, not black, which might suggest that even if there are significant
pockets of racism in the United States there is also a strong condemnation of that fact by many
white people. And this in a country that elected a black man president not once, but twice, and
that black president had a cabinet that included a large number of African-Americans.
Also, to further obfuscate any understanding of what might be taking place, the media and
chattering class is obsessed with finding white supremacists as
instigators of at least some of the actual violence. It would be a convenient explanation
for the Social Justice Warriors that proliferate in the media, though it is supported currently
by little actual evidence that anyone is exploiting right-wing groups.
Simultaneously, some on the right, to include the president, are blaming legitimately dubbed
domestic
terrorist group Antifa , which is perhaps more plausible, though again evidence of
organized instigation appears to be on the thin side. Still another source of the mayhem
apparently consists of some folks getting all excited by the turmoil and breaking windows and
tossing Molotov cocktails, as did
two upper middle class attorneys in Brooklyn last week.
Nevertheless, the search goes on for a guilty party. Explaining the demonstrations and riots
as the result of the horrible killing of a black man by police which has revulsed both black
and white Americans would be too simple to satisfy the convoluted yearnings of the likes of
Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow.
Which brings us to Russia. How convenient is it to fall back on Russia which, together with
the Chinese, is reputedly already reported to be working hard to subvert the November U.S.
election. And what better way to do just that than to call on one of the empty-heads of the
Barack Obama administration, whose foreign policy achievements included the destruction of a
prosperous Libya and the killing of four American diplomats in Benghazi, the initiation of
kinetic hostilities with Syria, the failure to achieve a reset with Russia and the
assassinations of American citizens overseas without any due process. But Obama sure did talk
nice and seem pleasant unlike the current occupant of the White House.
The predictable Wolf Blitzer had a recent interview with perhaps the emptiest head of all
the empowered women who virtually ran the Obama White House. Susan Rice was U.N. Ambassador and
later National Security Advisor under Barack Obama. Before that she was a Clinton appointee who
served as Undersecretary of State for African Affairs. She is reportedly currently being
considered as a possible running mate for Joe Biden as she has all the necessary qualifications
being a woman and black.
While Ambassador and National Security Advisor, Rice had the reputation of being
extremely abrasive . She ran into trouble when she failed to be convincing in support of
the Obama administration exculpatory narrative regarding what went wrong in Benghazi when the
four Americans, to include the U.S. Ambassador, were killed.
"We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all
wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to
hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also,
I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on
my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well. I would not be surprised to
learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I
wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form."
It should be noted that Rice, a devout Democrat apparatchik, produced no evidence whatsoever
that the Russians were or have been involved in "fomenting" the reactions to the George Floyd
demonstrations and riots beyond the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden all
believe that Moscow is responsible for everything. Clinton in particular hopes that some day
someone will actually believe her when she claims that she lost to Trump in 2016 due to Russia.
Even Robert Mueller, he of the Russiagate Inquiry, could not come up with any real evidence
suggesting that the relatively low intensity meddling in the election by the Kremlin had any
real impact. Nor was there any suggestion that Moscow was actually colluding with the Trump
campaign, nor with its appointees, to include National Security Advisor designate Michael
Flynn.
Fortunately, no one took much notice of Rice based on her "experience," or her judgement
insofar as she possesses that quality. Glenn Greenwald
responded :
"This is fuxxing lunacy -- conspiratorial madness of the worst kind -- but it's delivered
by a Serious Obama Official and a Respected Mainstream Newscaster so it's all fine This is
Infowars-level junk. Should Twitter put a 'False' label on this? Or maybe a hammer and sickle
emoji?"
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova accurately described the
Rice performance as a "perfect example of barefaced propaganda." She wrote on her Facebook
page "Are you trying to play the Russia card again? You've been playing too long – come
back to reality" instead of using "dirty methods of information manipulation" despite "having
absolutely no facts to prove [the] allegations go out and face your people, look them in the
eye and try telling them that they are being controlled by the Russians through YouTube and
Facebook. And I will sit back and watch 'American exceptionalism' in action."
It should be assumed that the Republicans will be coming up with their own candidate for
"fomenting" the riots and demonstrations. It already includes Antifa, of course, but is likely
to somehow also involve the Chinese, who will undoubtedly be seen as destroying American
democracy through the double whammy of a plague and race riots. Speaking at the White House,
National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien
warned about foreign incitement , including not only the Chinese, but also Iran and even
Zimbabwe. And, oh yes, Russia.
One thing is for sure, no matter who is ultimately held accountable, no one in the Congress
or White House will be taking the blame for anything.
President Donald Trump's campaign is demanding CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll
that showed him well behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The demand, coming in the form of a cease and desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker
that contained numerous incorrect and misleading claims, was immediately rejected by the
network.
"We stand by our poll," said Matt Dornic, a CNN spokesman.
The CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released on Monday shows Trump trailing the former vice
president by 14 points, 55%-41%, among registered voters. It also finds the President's
approval rating at 38% -- his worst mark since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval
ratings for one-term Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their
reelection years -- and his disapproval rating at 57%.
In the letter to Zucker, the Trump campaign argued that the CNN poll is "designed to mislead
American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling."
Retired federal judge John Gleeson was recently appointed by U.S. District Judge Emmet
Sullivan to argue against dismissal of the case against former National Security Adviser
Michael Flynn and to advise him on whether the court should substitute its own charge of charge
for Flynn for now claiming innocence.
I have been highly critical of Sullivan's orders and particularly the importation of third
parties to make arguments that neither party supports in a criminal case.
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.390.0_en.html#goog_1769897594
NOW PLAYING
Flynn asks appeals court to toss criminal charges
Now Gleeson has filed a brief that confirms the worst fears that many of us had about his
appointment. Gleeson assails what he called "a trumped-up accusation of government misconduct."
The ultimate position advocated in Gleeson's arguments would be a nightmare for criminal
defendants, criminal defense counsel and civil libertarians. Indeed, as discussed below,
Gleeson was previously reversed as a judge for usurping the authority of prosecutors.
Gleeson actually makes the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland" look like an ACLU lawyer.
After all she just called for "Sentence First–Verdict Afterward" Gleeson is dispensing
with any need for verdict on perjury, just the sentence. However, since these arguments are
viewed as inimical to the Trump Administration,
many seem blind to the chilling implications .
In his
82-page filing Gleeson notably rejects the idea of a perjury charge, which I previously
criticized as a dangerous and ridiculous suggestion despite the support from many legal
analysts. He notes that such a move would be "irregular" and
"I respectfully suggest that the best response to Flynn's perjury is not to respond in
kind. Ordering a defendant to show cause why he should not be held in contempt based on a
perjurious effort to withdraw a guilty plea is not what judges typically do. To help restore
confidence in the integrity of the judicial process, the Court should return regularity to
that process."
This seems a carefully crafted way of saying that the many calls for a perjury charge are as
out of line with prior cases as what these same critics allege was done by the Justice
Department.
However, Gleeson is not striking an independent or principled position. Rather, he is
suggesting that the Court simply treat Flynn as a perjurer, punish him as a perjurer, but not
give him a trial as a perjurer. Thus, he is advocating that the court "should take Flynn's
perjury into account in sentencing him on the offense to which he has already admitted
guilty."
Thus, according to Gleeson, the Court should first sentence a defendant on a crime that the
prosecutors no longer believe occurred in a case that prosecutors believe (and many of us have
argued) was marred by their own misconduct. He would then punish the defendant further by
treating his support for dismissal and claims of coercion as perjury. That according to former
judge Gleeson is a return to "regularity." I have been a criminal defense attorney for decades
and I have never even heard of anything like that. It is not "regular." It is ridiculous.
Gleeson himself came in for criticism in the filing by Flynn's counsel who note that the
former judge appointed by Sullivan not only publicly advocated against Flynn's position but as
a judge was chastised by the Second Circuit for misusing his position to grandstand in a case
involving a deferred prosecution agreement. The defense cited HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 863 F.3d 125, 136 (2d
Cir. 2017) where the Second Circuit reversed Gleeson for exaggerating his role in a way
that "would be to turn the presumption of regularity on its head."
The similarities to the present case are notable, including arguments that Gleeson intruded
upon prosecutorial discretion. The Second Circuit held:
"By sua sponte invoking its supervisory power at the outset of this case to oversee the
government's entry into and implementation of the DPA, the district court impermissibly
encroached on the Executive's constitutional mandate to "take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed." U.S. Const. art. II, § 3. In the absence of evidence to the
contrary, the Department of Justice is entitled to a presumption of regularity -- that is, a
presumption that it is lawfully discharging its duties. Though that presumption can of course
be rebutted in such a way that warrants judicial intervention, it cannot be preemptively
discarded based on the mere theoretical possibility of misconduct. Absent unusual
circumstances not present here, a district court's role vis-à-vis a DPA is limited to
arraigning the defendant, granting a speedy trial waiver if the DPA does not represent an
improper attempt to circumvent the speedy trial clock, and adjudicating motions or disputes
as they arise."
The Court acknowledged that there may be cases warranting great judicial involvement.
However, the court found that Gleeson had acted on his own presumptions and not evidence. It
also reaffirmed that there is a presumption in favor of the prosecution that he
ignored:
"The district court justified its concededly "novel" exercise of supervisory power in this
context by observing that "it is easy to imagine circumstances in which a deferred
prosecution agreement, or the implementation of such an agreement, so transgresses the bounds
of lawfulness or propriety as to warrant judicial intervention to protect the integrity of
the Court." HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 2013 WL 3306161, at *6. We agree that it is not difficult to
imagine such circumstances. But the problem with this reasoning is that it runs headlong into
the presumption of regularity that federal courts are obliged to ascribe to prosecutorial
conduct and decisionmaking. That presumption is rooted in the principles that undergird our
constitutional structure. In particular, "because the United States Attorneys are charged
with taking care that the laws are faithfully executed, there is a `presumption of regularity
support[ing] their prosecutorial decisions and, in the absence of clear evidence to the
contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties.'" United
States v. Sanchez, 517
F.3d 651 , 671 (2d Cir. 2008) (alteration in original) (quoting United States v.
Armstrong, 517 U.S.
456 , 464, 116 S.Ct. 1480, 134 L.Ed.2d 687 (1996)). In resting its exercise of
supervisory authority on hypothesized scenarios of egregious misconduct, the district court
turned this presumption on its head. See HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 2013 WL 3306161, at *6
("[C]onsider a situation where the current monitor needs to be replaced. What if the
replacement's only qualification for the position is that he or she is an intimate
acquaintance of the prosecutor proposing the appointment?" (citation omitted)).
Rather than
presume "in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary" that the prosecutors administering
the DPA were "properly discharg[ing] their official duties," the district court invoked its
supervisory power -- and encroached on the Executive's prerogative -- based on the mere
theoretical possibility that the prosecutors might one day abdicate those duties. Sanchez,
517 F.3d at 671 (internal quotation mark omitted)."
Gleeson can now argue that he found the case that he did not establish as a judge. However,
his brief is filled with sweeping presumptions against the motivations and analysis of the
Justice Department, even though many outsiders agree with that analysis. The Flynn case is
based on statements that even the FBI agents reportedly did not believe were intentional lies.
Moreover, there is a clear basis to question the materiality element to the criminal charge.
People can disagree reasonably on both points, but that is the point. The Justice Department
has decided that it agrees that the case is flawed in line with the analysis of various
experts. The court might not agree with that interpretation and many other experts may
vehemently oppose it. However, it is a legitimate legal argument that cannot be substituted by
the Court for its own preferences.
None of this seems to penetrate the analysis of Gleeson who shows the same aggrandizement of
judicial authority that got him reversed as a judge. He argues for a court potentially sending
someone to jail when the prosecutors no longer believe he is guilty of a crime and believe that
he was the victim of bias and abuse.
Imagine what that would portend for future criminal defendants who want to argue coercion
and abuse. Their counsel would have to warn them that they could be sent to prison for a longer
period for perjury even if the prosecutors agree with them. Moreover, Gleeson believes that
they should not even be afforded a trial as perjurers, just treated as perjurers.
That is being claimed in the name of "regularity." Unfortunately, such analysis has become
all too regular in this age of rage.
"... Democratic Party leaders are currently under fire for staging a ridiculous performative display of sympathy for George Floyd by kneeling for eight minutes while wearing Kente cloth, a traditional African textile. The streets of America are filled with protesters demanding a total overhaul of the nation's entire approach to policing. ..."
"... I don't know what will happen with these protests. I don't know if the demonstrators will get anything like the changes they are pushing for, or if their movement will be stopped in its tracks. What I do know is that if it is stopped, it will be because of Democrats and their allies. ..."
"... The op-ed understandably received severe public backlash which resulted in a senior staff member's resignation . But if these protests end it won't be because tyrants in the Republican Party like Donald Trump and Tom Cotton succeeded in making the case for beating them into silence with the U.S. military. It will be because liberal manipulators succeeded in co-opting and stagnating its momentum. ..."
"... It is true that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the same sense that there's a difference between the jab and the cross in boxing. The jab is often used to keep an opponent at bay and set up the more damaging cross, but they're both wielded by the same boxer, and they're both punching you in the face. ..."
"... Obama was not the lesser of two evils, he was the more effective of the two evils ..."
"... The rot started long before Clinton. In the 1944 election the DNC replaced FDR's highly popular socialist VP Henry Wallace with Truman. At the convention party leaders closed the voting immediately after Wallace won resoundingly without confirming him. Furious politicking, bribery, and delegate lockouts over the next several days finally resulted in a Truman win and his immediate confirmation as the VP candidate. ..."
"... I agree on what the Democrat Party is and does. However, I'd shift the focus to the money behind it. The forces resisting change are what FDR called the moneyed interests. They've got the money, and their whole priority is to keep it. ..."
"... given a Supreme Court ruling that money is free speech and a Congress that's never has had any will to change the role of money or lobbies in politics, I'm afraid you are stuck with what you have. ..."
"... There is another well-known Twentieth Century play, "No Exit." And that title sums up the American very real situation. ..."
So ends both acts of the Samuel Beckett play "Waiting for Godot." One of the two main
characters suggests leaving, the other agrees, followed by the stage direction that both remain
motionless until curtain.
This is also the entire role of the Democratic Party. To enthusiastically agree with
American support for movements calling for real changes which benefit ordinary people, while
making no actual moves to provide no such changes. The actors read the lines, but remain
motionless.
Barack Obama made a whole political career out of this. People elected him because he
promised hope and change, then for eight years whenever hopeful people demanded changes he'd
say "Yes, we all need to get together and have a conversation about that," express sympathy and
give a moving speech, and then nothing would happen. The actors remain motionless, and Godot
never comes.
Democratic Party leaders are
currently under fire for staging a ridiculous performative display of sympathy for George
Floyd by kneeling for eight minutes while wearing Kente cloth, a traditional African textile.
The streets of America are filled with protesters demanding a total overhaul of the nation's
entire approach to policing.
Meanwhile it's blue states with Democratic governors and cities with Democratic mayors where
the bulk of the police brutality, people are objecting to, is occurring. The Democrats are
going out
of their way to spin police brutality as the result of Trump's presidency, but facts in
evidence say America's violent and increasingly militarized police force would be a problem if
every seat in every office in America were blue.
I don't know what will happen with these protests. I don't know if the demonstrators will
get anything like the changes they are pushing for, or if their movement will be stopped in its
tracks. What I do know is that if it is stopped, it will be because of Democrats and their
allies.
Bloodthirsty Senator Tom Cotton recently took a break from torturing small animals in his
basement to write an incendiary op-ed for
The New York Times explaining to the American public why using the military to quash
these protests is something that they should want. We later learned that The New York
Times op-ed team had actually come up with the idea and
pitched it to the senator , not the other way around, and that it was the Times itself which
came up with the inflammatory headline "Send In the Troops."
From New York Times town hall: op-ed team pitched the piece TO Tom Cotton. Not the other
way around.
The op-ed understandably received severe public backlash which resulted in a senior staff member's
resignation . But if these protests end it won't be because tyrants in the Republican Party
like Donald Trump and Tom Cotton succeeded in making the case for beating them into silence
with the U.S. military. It will be because liberal manipulators succeeded in co-opting and
stagnating its momentum.
Watch them. Watch Democrats and their allied media and corporate institutions try to sell
the public a bunch of words and a smattering of feeble, impotent legislation to mollify the
masses, without ever giving the people the real changes that they actually need.
It remains to be seen if they will succeed in doing this, but they are already working on
it. That is their entire purpose. It's much easier to control a populace with false promises
and empty words than with brute force, and the manipulators know it. That is the Democratic
Party's role.
It is true that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the same sense
that there's a difference between the jab and the cross in boxing. The jab is often used to
keep an opponent at bay and set up the more damaging cross, but they're both wielded by the
same boxer, and they're both punching you in the face.
Don't let them disguise that jab as anything other than what it is. Don't let them keep you
at bay with a bunch of impotent performances and word magic. If they have it their way, they'll
keep that jab in your face all night until the knockout punch leaves you staring up at the
arena lights like it always does, wondering what the hell happened and why Godot never
came.
When you vote for a "lesser" evil, you condone and become evil. Voting for a peace
candidate is the ONLY moral choice. Your line of thinking perpetuates a self-fulfilling
prophecy of third party impossibility. So time for you to "get real". I also think it is
imperative to insist on ranked-choice voting to get us out of the two party/one war party
trap. BTW, Obama had his own brand of fascism. When we are the "exceptional" nation, all
others are unexceptional and their citizens expendable. Your TDS has blinded you to our real
problems.
AnneR , June 10, 2020 at 12:36
So what we are supposed to do, then, is vote for the very same evil, just enacted with a
softer, gentler voice and smoother patina? And by the way, I'm a MA in History
We change absolutely zero domestically and minus zero abroad in those countries where we
gaily – apparently – bomb and missile as if there were no tomorrow (for the
recipients [all brownish you'll note], dead, injured or alive), no matter which colored face
of the single party we "lesser evil" choose. Frankly pretending that there is such a thing as
"lesser evil" voting when both parties behave in the same way, with different lipstick on is
a tad hypocritical because all it boils down to is "we want a smiley, pleasant, charmingly
spoken well educated barbarian rather than a grotesque, in your face, thicko one in
charge."
No, ta. I'd rather vote my conscience, my principles which have nowt to do with either of
corporate-capitalist-imperialist-MIC adoring-barbarian faces of the same bloody (literally)
party.
Marc G Landry , June 10, 2020 at 12:38
For a history teacher, you seem to have given up on Democracy because you hate Trump.
America WORKED when people voted their conscience, NOT for a lesser of two evils. And if
people did this, within 12 years a THIRD PARTY would become strong enough to make the change
we want. Democracy works when people vote their conscience, by person or by platform, NOT
when everyone has to figure out a strategy who to vote for because you do not have the
strength to vote by conscience or the guts to build a new party OVER TIME!
Glen Ford, of the excellent BlackAgendaReport, put it well: Obama was not the lesser of
two evils, he was the more effective of the two evils. It seems to work with a lot of people
who can't let go of their "liberal" perspective.
Anything goes, as long as it's served up on a politically correct platter.
John , June 9, 2020 at 16:51
and the solution is to (a) vote them out of office, (b) vote for the repubs, (c) vote for
third party, (d) don't vote, (e) general strike and continuous demonstrations? My answer is
both d and e. How about you?
Drew Hunkins , June 9, 2020 at 16:09
The Democratic Party hasn't done one substantive thing for the masses since Medicare c.
1966.
The destruction of unions and the labor movement is one of the prime reasons we're in this
mess. Strong unions means the Democratic Party would have a wing of populist firebrands with
moxie and muscle, voicing objections in Washington, advocating for progressive reforms,
pounding the table, attacking Wall Street and big money, and most imporantly -- delivering
substantive tangible benefits to the people every few years!! The labor movement would have
cultivated these public speakers and activist politicians who had boatloads of chutzpah,
instead what we're left with is a slickie boy Wall St hustler like Obama.
Litchfield , June 9, 2020 at 16:56
Right on!
Pushing the nonexistent "agree" button.
See also my comment in which I recommend reading Thomas Frank's "Listen, Liberal" for a
really great tour of the downfall of the Dem Party, very well documented, and a pleasure to
read.
It was not only labor that the "new" Dems under Clinton sucker-punched. They made a
practice of demonstrating to Wall Street, the NYT, and other "liberal" entities (ha ha sob)
and pundits that they were happy and willing to deny, Judas-like, and actually to attack
their traditional constituencies, the source of the their original power and their raison
d'etre since the thirties.
Now what one sees coming to the fore is the longer history of the damned Dems, that of
cravenness compromise to the Jim Crow South and to other atavistic powers such as the
National Security State, the MIC, the prisons-for-profit complex, and other such horrors.
It is like we're seeing that this leopard-party can't really changes its spots.
There is no reason and really no justification for giving one's vote to this Democratic
Party.
Litchfield , June 9, 2020 at 15:36
For chapter and verse, and very witty commentary, on how the Democratic Party became the
party that destroyed the (1) the working class, (2) the poor in America and especially their
children, and (3) now, the middle class is available, see:
"Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?", by Thomas Frank.
Caitlin, I urge you to read it. Also, the notes, which are thorough and informative in
themselves.
All the answers to the questions you pose are there. The true rot starts with Bill Clinton
and the DLC, which he headed. Or course Hillary was there with him the whole time. Mouthing
one set of platitudes for the public ("I feel your pain") and conspiring with Republicans and
other Democrats to push and pass legislation that inexorably destroyed huge swaths of the
USA: NAFTA; repeal of Glass-Steagall; welfare "reform"; three-strikes legislation; creation
of prisons for profit (Biden was big in this); introduction of almost 100 new crimes with
mandatory minimum sentencing; and more.
Then we move on to "hope and change" Obama (with his sidekick, Larry Summers): bailout of
banks, not of citizens; health care "reform" written by Repugs; more foreign adventures in
Libya, Afghanistan, etc. and more deaths and maimings of American servicepeople; and on and
on. And all the while a concerted effort to ignore the white working class and to accuse any
white who didn't like this crappy new deal and loss of livelihood and dignity as a racist.
Since I first voted in 1968, as a registered Dem, I have been along for this ride since the
beginning and I recall only too clearly my horror -- after feeling with Clinton's win in 1992
that we were finally getting off the awful post-assassination "detour" -- at hearing of all
of these new destructive, unfair, "Democratic" initiatives in the 1990s and at their actually
being passed.
As Frank remarks, voting for Trump was the working class's richly deserved payback to the
Clintons for decades of policies that punished America's 99% both directly (targeted) and
indirectly. As he puts it, with Trump leading the Repugs and, for the first time, talking
about the hits the working class had taken under the Dems, bad trade deals, etc., suddenly
there *was* "someplace else to go" for previous Dem voters. It should have been no surprise
that working-class white and also many blacks and women went there.
But the Dems still insist that they occupy the moral "liberal" high ground, with
absolutely no foundation for doing so except for empty identitarianist bromides and silliness
such as the kneeling show. Now, the Floyd killing is being used to further deflect attention
from the Dems' catastrophic record regarding the WHOLE American 99%, white and minority, men
and women.
Trump makes it easy to blame the whole mess on him. But the Dems, with their decades of
betrayal of the American people and kicking their constituents in the gut, brought us
Trump.
The complacent Dem self-righteousness jacks up the puke index that much more.
buy my vote , June 10, 2020 at 11:57
The rot started long before Clinton. In the 1944 election the DNC replaced FDR's highly
popular socialist VP Henry Wallace with Truman. At the convention party leaders closed the
voting immediately after Wallace won resoundingly without confirming him. Furious
politicking, bribery, and delegate lockouts over the next several days finally resulted in a
Truman win and his immediate confirmation as the VP candidate.
FDR's rapidly deteriorating health made it clear that the VP would be the next president.
The DNC, firmly in the hands of corporate industrialists, insured that the VP was compliant
with their program. Truman was a failed businessman, not particularly intelligent, and the
perfect puppet. You can thank him and the DNC for the Cold War.
Mark Thomason , June 9, 2020 at 14:14
I agree on what the Democrat Party is and does. However, I'd shift the focus to the money behind it. The forces resisting change are what FDR called the moneyed interests. They've got the
money, and their whole priority is to keep it.
They realized that they could buy up the only "alternative" to themselves, and prevent
there from being anybody at all willing to be a real alternative. They do. That is for
example what Biden has always been, the Senator from money based in the corporate and banking
HQ's of Delaware. Hence is sponsorship of the anti-consumer laws such as his bankruptcy
bill.
The Democratic Party is the only place that could be a political home for reformers. It
once was. It might be again. But first, money would need to be disempowered.
JOHN CHUCKMAN , June 9, 2020 at 14:01
Indeed. But it's the money-rotted political system that brings the result. And given a Supreme Court ruling that money is free speech and a Congress that's never has
had any will to change the role of money or lobbies in politics, I'm afraid you are stuck
with what you have.
There is another well-known Twentieth Century play, "No Exit." And that title sums up the American very real situation.
"... It is true that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the same sense that there's a difference between the jab and the cross in boxing. The jab is often used to keep an opponent at bay and set up the more damaging cross, but they're both wielded by the same boxer, and they're both punching you in the face. ..."
It is true that there's a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the same
sense that there's a difference between the jab and the cross in boxing. The jab is often used
to keep an opponent at bay and set up the more damaging cross, but they're both wielded by the
same boxer, and they're both punching you in the face.
Thanks for that link, a very interesting and detailed article. It seems Haftar is an
erratic and unreliable character and the LNA's major foreign allies/sponsors, including
Russia, make no secret of the fact that they basically consider him a temporary "necessary
evil" until a more solid and reliable leader can be found.
Now "Horrible Lisa" re-surfaced in MSNBC. Not surprising one bit. This is a deep state retirement package...
Notable quotes:
"... Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ..."
Barack Obama wanted to 'know everything' the FBI was 'doing' according to newly released text messages between FBI lovers
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
Slime, slime and more slime. Obama headed up the whole thing. Zero integrity there.
The leaders of the Democratic Party, Barrak
Obama, Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, Chuck Schummer, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Shiff and his sisters father-in-law
George Soros.
Here is what this all boils down to. Hillary Clinton email to Donna Brazile, Oct., 17, 2016. "If that f*cking ba*tard
wins, we're all going to hang from nooses! You better fix this sh*t!"
So another rabid neocon is hired by neocon MSM and instantly was interviewed by neocon Madcow, blaming Russia for the coup
d'état against Trump that Obama administration with her help launched. Nothing new, nothing interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... Page testified that even by May 2017, they did not find such evidence that "it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing" to connect Trump and Russia. ..."
"... There was little reason to believe in this "insurance policy" given the absence of evidence. Yet, Page still viewed the effort led by Strzok as an indemnity in case of election. ..."
"... The Inspector General found that, soon after the first surveillance was ordered, FBI agents began to cast doubts on the veracity of the Steele document ..."
"... it was quickly established that no credible evidence existed to support the continuance of the investigation -- which Page called their "insurance policy." ..."
"... Page also left out her other emails including calling Trump foul names while praising Hillary Clinton and other opponents. Even if she were not involved in the ongoing controversy, her emails show her to be fervently opposed to both Trump and the Republicans. ..."
Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer who resigned in the midst of the Russian investigation
scandal, has been hired a NBC and MSNBC as a legal analyst. The move continues a trend started
by CNN in hiring Trump critics, including officials terminated for misconduct, to offer legal
analysis on the Trump Administration.
We have previously discussed the use by CNN of figures like Andrew McCabe to give legal
analysis despite his being referred for possible criminal charges by the Inspector General for
repeatedly lying to federal investigators. The media appears intent on fulfilling the narrative
of President Trump that it is overly biased and hostile in its analysis. Indeed, it now appears
a marketing plan that has subsumed the journalistic mission.
Page appeared with Rachel Maddow and began her work as the new legal analyst by discussing
her own controversial work at the FBI. Page is still part of investigation by various
committees and the investigation being conducted by U.S Attorney John Durham.
I have
denounced President Trump for his repeated and often vicious references to Page's affair with
fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok . There is no excuse for such personal abuse. I also
do not view her emails as proof of her involvement in a deep-state conspiracy as opposed to
clearly inappropriate and partisan communications for someone involved in the investigation.
Indeed, Page did not appear a particularly significant figure in the investigation or even the
FBI as a whole. She was primarily dragged into the controversy due to her relationship with
Strzok.
However, Trump has legitimate reason to object (as he has) to this hiring as do those who
expect analysis from experts without a personal stake in the ongoing investigations. It has
long been an ethical rule in American journalism not to pay for interviews. Either NBC is
paying for exclusive rights to Page in interviews like the one on Maddow's show or it is hiring
an expert with a personal stake in these controversies to give legal analysis. Neither is a
good option for a network that represented the gold standard in journalism with figures like
John Chancellor, Edwin Newman, and Roger Mudd.
It is not that Page disagrees with the Administration on legal matters or these cases. It is
the fact that she is personally involved in the ongoing stories and has shown intense and at
times unhinged bias against Trump in communications with Strzok and others. She is the news
story, or at least a significant part of it.
Andrew A. Weissmann has also been retained as a legal analyst by NBC and MSNBC. While
Weissmann has been raised by Republicans as a lightening rod for his perceived partisan bias as
a member of the Mueller team, he does not have the type of personal conflict or interest in
these investigations. Weissmann is likely to be raised in the hearing over the next weeks into
the Flynn case in terms of prosecutorial decisions. (It is worth noting that Fox hired Trey
Gowdy at an analyst even though he would be commenting on matters that came before his
committee in these investigations.) In terms of balance, however, the appearance of both Page
and Weissmann giving analysis on the Administration's response to the protests is a bit
jarring for some .
Page was an unknown attorney in the FBI before she was forced into the public eye due to her
emails with Strzok. Her emails fueled the controversy over bias in the FBI. They were
undeniably biased and strident including the now famous reference to the FBI investigation as
"insurance" in case Trump was elected. In the email in August 2016, here's what Strzok
wrote:
I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office [Andrew McCabe
is the FBI deputy director and married to a Democratic Virginia State Senate candidate] for
that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an
insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40
What particularly concerns me is that Page has come up recently in new disclosures in the Flynn
case . In newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former
FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the
email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law
that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an
easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national
security or learning critical intelligence. As I have noted, the email reinforces other
evidence that it was about bagging Flynn for the case in the legal version of a canned trophy
hunt.
It appears that, on January 4, 2017, the FBI's Washington Field Office issued a "Closing
Communication" indicating that the bureau was terminating "CROSSFIRE RAZOR" -- the newly
disclosed codename for the investigation of Flynn. That is when Strzok intervened. The FBI had
investigated Flynn and various databases and determined that "no derogatory information was
identified in FBI holdings." Due to this conclusion, the Washington Field Office concluded that
Flynn "was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella
case." On that same day, however, fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok instructed the FBI case
manager handling CROSSFIRE RAZOR to keep the investigation open, telling him "Hey don't close
RAZOR." The FBI official replied, "Okay." Strzok then confirmed again, "Still open right? And
you're the case agent? Going to send you [REDACTED] for the file." The FBI official confirmed:
"I have not closed it Still open." Strzok responded "Rgr. I couldn't raise [REDACTED] earlier.
Pls keep it open for now."
Strzok also texted Page:
"Razor still open. :@ but serendipitously good, I guess. You want those chips and Oreos?"
Page replied "Phew. But yeah that's amazing that he is still open. Good, I guess."
Strzok replied "Yeah, our utter incompetence actually helps us. 20% of the time, I'm
guessing :)"
Page will be the focus of much of the upcoming inquiries both in Congress and the Justice
Department as will CNN's legal analyst Andrew McCabe.
In her Maddow segment, Page attempts to defuse the "insurance policy" email as all part of
her commitment to protecting the nation, not her repeatedly stated hatred for Trump. In what is
now a signature for MSNBC, Maddow did not ask a single probative question but actually helped
her frame the response. Even in echo journalistic circles, the echo between the two was
deafening.
Page explained"
"It's an analogy. First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of interpreting what I
believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy. We're talking about
whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that
he's going to be president or not."
You have to keep in mind if President Trump doesn't become president, the
national-security risk, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia,
plummets. You're not so worried about what Russia's doing vis-à-vis a member of his
campaign if he's not president because you're not going to have access to classified
information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods in our national-security
apparatus. So, the 'insurance policy' was an analogy. It's like an insurance policy when
you're 40. You don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance
policy."
Maddow then decided to better frame the spin:
"So, don't just hope that he's not going to be elected and therefore not press forward
with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with the investigation just in case
he does get in there."
Page simply responds " Exactly ."
Well, not exactly.
Page is leaving out that, as new documents show, there never was credible evidence of any
Russian collusion. Recently, the Congress unsealed testimony from a long line of Obama
officials who denied ever seeing such evidence,
including some who publicly suggested that they had .
Indeed, Page testified that even by
May 2017, they did not find such evidence that "it still existed in the scope of possibility
that there would be literally nothing" to connect Trump and Russia.
There was little reason to
believe in this "insurance policy" given the absence of evidence. Yet, Page still viewed the
effort led by Strzok as an indemnity in case of election.
The Inspector General found that, soon after the first surveillance was ordered, FBI agents
began to cast doubts on the veracity of the Steele document and suggested it might be
disinformation from Russian intelligence. The IG said that, due to the relatively low standard
required for a FISA application, he could not say that the original application was invalid but
that it was quickly established that no credible evidence existed to support the continuance of
the investigation -- which Page called their "insurance policy."
Page also left out her other emails
including calling Trump foul names while praising Hillary Clinton and other opponents. Even if
she were not involved in the ongoing controversy, her emails show her to be fervently opposed
to both Trump and the Republicans.
Bias however has become the coin of the realm for some networks. Why have echo journalism
when you can have an analyst simply repeat her position directly? For viewers who become irate
at the appearance of opposing views (
as vividly demonstrated in the recent apology of the New York Times for publishing a
conservative opinion column ), having a vehemently biased and personally invested analyst
is reassuring. It is not like Page will suddenly blurt out a defense of Flynn or Trump or
others in the Administration.
With Page, NBC has crossed the Rubicon and left its objectivity scattered on the far
bank.
we_the_people, 11 minutes ago (Edited)
Nothing says professional journalism like hiring a dirty whore who was an active
participant in a coup to overthrow a duly elected President!
The level of insanity is truly amazing!
Heroism, 14 minutes ago
The MSM gets more Orwellian by the day, and today is like tomorrow.
More proof that corruption and deceit pay, big time. Surely, at some point viewers and voters
will say, "Enough!" and hit these purveyors of lies where it hurts--in the ratings and pocketbooks. Meanwhile,
the people will just willingly suffer..............
Hollywood once gave us the Cold War thriller called "The Hunt for Red October ." And now the
U.S. Senate and its Republican committee chairmen in Washington have launched a different sort
of hunt made for the movies.
Armed with subpoenas, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., want to
interrogate a slew of Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials hoping to identify
who invented and sustained the bogus Russia collusion narrative that hampered Donald Trump's
early presidency.
And while Graham and Johnson aren't exactly Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, they and their
GOP cohorts have a theory worthy of a Tom Clancy novel-turned-movie: The Russia collusion
investigation was really a plot by an outgoing administration to thwart the new president.
"What we had was a very quiet insurrection that took place," Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the
Tennessee Republican, told Just the News on Thursday as she described the theory of Senate
investigators. "And there were probably dozens of people at DOJ and FBI that knew what was
going on.
"But they hate Donald Trump so much that they were willing to work under the cloak of law
and try to use that to shield them so that they could take an action on their disgust," she
added. "They wanted to prohibit him from being president. And when he won, they wanted to
render him ineffective at doing his job."
For much of the last two years, the exact theory that congressional Republicans held about
the bungled, corrupt Russia probe -- where collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
was ultimately disproven and FBI misconduct was confirmed -- was always evolving.
But after explosive testimony this week from former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein,
who openly accused the FBI of keeping him in the dark about flaws, failures and exculpatory
evidence in the case, the GOP believes it may prove the Russia case was a conspiracy to use the
most powerful law enforcement and intelligence tools in America to harm Trump.
Two years of declassified memos are now in evidence that show:
The FBI was warned before it used Christopher Steele's dossier as evidence to target the
Trump campaign with a FISA warrant that the former British spy might be the target of Russian
disinformation, that he despised Trump and that he was being paid to help Hillary Clinton's
campaign. But agents proceeded anyway.
The bureau was told by the CIA that its primary target, Trump adviser Carter Page, wasn't
a Russian spy but rather a CIA asset. But it hid that evidence from the DOJ and courts, even
falsifying a document to keep the secret.
The FBI opened a case on Trump adviser George Papadopoulos on the suspicion he might
arrange Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton but quickly determined he didn't have the Russian
contacts to pull it off. But the case kept going.
The FBI intercepted conversations between its informants and Papadopoulos and Page
showing the two men made numerous statements of innocence, and kept that evidence from the
DOJ and the courts.
The FBI investigated Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for five months and
concluded there was no derogatory evidence he committed a crime or posed an intelligence
threat and recommended closing the case. But higher-ups overruled the decision and proceeded
to interview Flynn.
The FBI and DOJ both knew by August 2017 there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion
but allowed another 18 months of investigation to persist without announcing the president
was innocent.
That is just a handful of the key evidentiary anchors of the storyline Republicans have
developed. Now they want to know who helped carry out each of these acts.
"There are millions of Americans pretty upset about this," Graham said this week. "There
are people on our side of the aisle who believe this investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, was
one of the most corrupt, biased criminal investigations in the history of the FBI. And we'd
like to see something done about it ."
Graham tried to take action to approve 50-plus subpoenas from the Senate Judiciary Committee
to witnesses on Thursday but was forced to delay a week.
Johnson, meanwhile, successfully secured about three dozen subpoenas to get documents and
interviews with key witnesses from his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee.
Evidence is growing, Johnson said, that there was not a "peaceful and cooperative"
transition between the Obama and Trump administrations in 2017.
"The conduct we know that occurred during the transition should concern everyone and
absolutely warrants further investigation," he said.
With Rosenstein's testimony now behind them, the senators have some lofty targets for
interviews or testimony going forward, including fired FBI Director James Comey, his deputy
Andrew McCabe, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, and the former chiefs of staff for President
Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
Blackburn said during an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast that the goal of
the subpoenas and witnesses was simple: to identify and punish the cast of characters who
sustained a Russia collusion narrative that was never supported by the evidence.
"Somebody cooked up the plot," she explained.
"Somebody gave the go-ahead to order, to implement it. Somebody did the dirty work and
carried it out -- and probably a lot of somebodies. And what frustrates the American people
is that nobody has been held accountable.
"Nobody has been indicted. Nobody has been charged, and they're all getting major book deals
and are profiting by what is criminal activity, if you look at the statutes that are on the
book, and if you say we're going to abide by the rule of law and be a nation of laws."
For Blackburn, identifying and punishing those responsible is essential for two goals: to
deter anyone in the future from abusing the FBI and FISA process again and to ensure Americans
there isn't a two-tiered system of justice in America.
"I think when you Google [Russia collusion] in future years, you're going to see a
screenshot of this cast of characters that cooked this up, because it is the ultimate plot,"
Blackburn said.
MSNBC announced on Friday that it has hired former FBI lawyer Lisa Page as an NBC News and
MSNBC national security and legal analyst.
On Friday night, President Trump blasted MSNBC's latest hiring decision.
"You must be kidding??? This is a total disgrace!" Trump tweeted.
Page made her debut as an MSNBC analyst during "Deadline: White House" alongside former
Mueller probe prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who appears to have been rehired by the network
after they severed ties after it was announced he was hosting a Biden fundraiser, which was
ultimately canceled.
Both Page and Weissmann offered legal analysis on the ongoing feud between President Trump
and Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser over the presence of outside troops.
Page is best known for her publicized text exchanges with her lover, ex-FBI agent Peter
Strzok, which revealed extreme animosity towards Trump during the 2016 election and created the
perception that their political views fueled the Russia investigation.
The texts that sounded the alarm for GOP lawmakers was Strzok's reference to an "insurance
policy" that was discussed at Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's office. Page denied that
meant the FBI had plotted to remove Trump if he won the election.
Last December, Page broke her silence and made her television debut on MSNBC's "The Rachel
Maddow Show," where she was asked about the "insurance policy" text.
"It's an analogy," Page explained. "First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of
interpreting what I believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy. We're
talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the
likelihood that he's going to be president or not."
She continued, "You have to keep in mind ... if President Trump doesn't become president,
the national-security risk, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia,
plummets. You're not so worried about what Russia's doing vis-à-vis a member of his
campaign if he's not president because you're not going to have access to classified
information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods in our national-security
apparatus. So, the 'insurance policy' was an anology. It's like an insurance policy when you're
40. You don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance policy."
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow chimed in, "So, don't just hope that he's not going to be elected
and therefore not press forward with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with
the investigation just in case he does get in there."
many thoughtful observers on the right -- including Ross Douthat ,
Rod Dreher , and
Dan McCarthy -- have pointed out that the current protesting and rioting is likely to help
Donald Trump and the Republicans. That is, the ongoing violence, fomented by leftist elements,
including Black Lives Matter and Antifa, could boomerang against Joe Biden and his
Democrats.
However, the planted assumption here is that the vandals and looters want Joe Biden to win.
And that's not so obvious. Indeed, maybe the truth is just the reverse.
To be sure, the protesters and looters all hate Donald Trump. And yet actions speak louder
than words, and their actions on the street suggest a kind of anti-matter affection for the Bad
Orange Man. That is, each act of violence obscures the memory of George Floyd, who died at the
knee of a Minneapolis policeman, and raises the prospect of a national backlash against both
peaceful protestors and violent looters, offering a ray of hope for Trump.
Indeed, Douthat quotes Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, whose research shows that
back in the 1960s, peaceful civil rights protests helped the Democrats, while violent
protests (also known as riots) hurt the Democrats. In Wasow's words, "proximity to
black-led nonviolent protests increased white Democratic vote-share whereas proximity to
black-led violent protests caused substantively important declines." And that's how Republican
Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
We might add that Humphrey was a lot like Biden. Both were gabby senators turned vice
presidents, regarded as reliable liberals, not as hard-edged leftists.
So now we're starting to see where Biden, a pillar of the smug liberal establishment -- he
once
told a group of donors that if he's elected, "nothing would fundamentally change" -- veers
away from the far-left ideologues amidst the mobs.
Let's let Andy Ngo –who has
shed blood , literally, while chronicling bullyboy leftists -- define the ideology of
Antifa and Black Lives Matter: "At its core, BLM is a revolutionary Marxist ideology. Alicia
Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, BLM's founders, are self-identified Marxists who make
no secret of their worship of communist terrorists and fugitives, like Assata Shakur. They want
the abolition of law enforcement and capitalism. They want regime change and the end of the
rule of law. Antifa has partnered with Black Lives Matter, for now, to help accelerate the
breakdown of society."
We can observe that by "regime change," these revolutionary leftists don't mean replacing
Trump with Biden -- they mean replacing capitalism and the Constitution. In the meantime, if
one looks at a Twitter feed identified by Ngo as an Antifa hub, It's Going Down , one sees plenty of anti-Trump rhetoric,
along with general hard leftism, but nothing in support of Biden.
However, here's something interesting: The Biden campaign shows no small degree of
support for the street radicals. As Reuters
reported on May 30,
"At least 13 Biden campaign staff members posted on Twitter on
Friday and Saturday that they made donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which opposes the
practice of cash bail, or making people pay to avoid pre-trial imprisonment. The group uses
donations to pay bail fees in Minneapolis."
We might observe that these 13 employees posted their pro-rioter sympathies on Twitter; in
other words, not only did they make no effort to hide their donations, but they also actively
bragged about them.
It could be argued, of course, that these are just 13 vanguard employees out of a campaign
staff that numbers in the hundreds, maybe even thousands. And yet as the Reuters piece adds,
Team Biden is not practicing political distancing from its in-house radicals: "Biden campaign
spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Reuters that the former vice president opposes
the institution of cash bail as a 'modern day debtors prison.'"
When pressed by Reuters -- which is not exactly Fox News in its editorial stance -- the
official spox for Middle Class Joe was unwilling to say more: "The campaign declined to answer
questions on whether the donations were coordinated within the campaign, underscoring the
politically thorny nature of the sometimes violent protests."
So we can see: The Biden campaign is trying to maintain its equipoise between liberals and
mobs, even as the former is bleeding into the latter. Indeed, a look at Biden's Twitter feed
shows the same port-side balancing act. On May 30, for instance, he tweeted , "If we are complacent,
if we are silent, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence. None of us can
turn away. We all have an obligation to speak out."
There's enough ambiguity here, as well as in his other tweets, to leave everyone parsing,
and guessing, as to what, exactly, Biden is saying -- except, as he
said on June 2, that he opposes the use of chokeholds to restrain violent suspects, and
also opposes more equipment for the police. The only other thing we know for sure is that he
hasn't tweeted an iota of specific sympathy for the people other than George Floyd who have
died in the recent violence. One such is
Patrick Underwood , an African American employee of the Federal Protective Service; he was
shot and killed in Oakland, Calif. on May 29.
Yet while the Biden campaign attempts to keep its relationship with Antifa and its ilk
fuzzy, other Democrats have made themselves clear. For instance, in 2018, then-Congressman
Keith Ellison tweeted
out a photograph of himself holding a copy of a book, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,
which the radical-chic types at The New Yorkerdescribed as
"A how-to for would-be activists, and a record of advice from anti-Fascist organizers past and
present." Ellison is now the attorney general for the state of Minnesota.
And on May 31, Ellison's son, Jeremiah, a Minneapolis city councilman, tweeted , "I hereby
declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA."
Still, if the Democrats can't quite quit Antifa, most are smart enough to recognize the
danger of being too closely associated with hooligans and radicals. Moreover, they need some
theory of the case they wish to make, which is that they loudly support the protests, even as
they mumble about the violence.
And Democrats have found their favored argument -- the one that conveniently takes them off
the hook. Indeed, it's an argument they increasingly deploy to explain everything bad that
happens: The Russians did it.
Thus on May 31, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice said on CNN of the
tumult, "In my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook."
We might allow that it's possible, even probable, that the Russian government has been
taking delight in this spate of violence in America. And it's similarly probable that the
governments of China, Iran, and Venezuela, too, have been pleased, to say nothing of varying
portions of the public in every country. And so sure, more than a few tweets and Facebook posts
have probably resulted -- after all, stories ripping the U.S. were right there, for instance,
on the front
page of China's Global Times .
Still, it's ridiculous to think that hundreds of thousands -- maybe millions -- of Americans
are taking their cues from a foreign power; we've got plenty of home-grown radicalism and
anger.
Yet even so, the Democrats have persisted in their Russia-dunnit narrative, because
it serves their political, and perhaps psychological, need -- the need to externalize criminal
behavior. In other words, don't blame us for the killings and lootings -- blame Moscow.
Okay, so back to Antifa and Black Lives Matter. The left wing of the Democratic Party --
including elements within the Biden campaign -- might like them, but there's no evidence that
they like Democrats back.
Indeed, if the violence keeps up, it will become obvious that the leftist radicals are
not trying to help Biden. To put it another way, the rads would become the objective
allies (a political science term connoting an ironic congruence of interest) of Trump.
To be sure, right now, Trump is running five or six points behind Biden in the
RealClearPolitics
polling average . And yet, just as Dreher, Douthat, and McCarthy suggest, if the violence
continues and Trump goes firm while Biden stays mushy, that could change.
Indeed, as we think of genuine radicalism, we would do well to look beyond the parochial
confines of American politics, Democrat vs. Republican. Instead, we might ponder the epic
panorama of leftist history, which offers radicals so much more inspiration than historically
centrist America.
For instance, we might look to Russia. But not to the Russia of Vladimir Putin , but
rather, to the Russia of Vladimir Lenin .
In the early 20th century, Lenin's Bolsheviks, awaiting their revolutionary moment, operated
according to a simple slogan: "The worse the better." That is, the enemy of Bolshevism was
incremental reform, or progress of any kind; the reds wanted conditions to get so bad as to
"justify" a communist revolution. And that's what Lenin and his comrades got in October 1917,
when they seized power in the midst of the calamities of World War One.
Yes, of course, the communists made conditions worse, not better, for ordinary Russians. And
yet things weren't worse for Lenin and his Bolsheviks -- they were now in power. So today,
that's the sort of dream that inspires Antifa radicals.
To be sure, an America dominated by Antifa and Black Lives Matter is a distant prospect. But
radicals figure that four more years of Trump in the White House will move the nation to even
higher levels of chaos -- and thus move them closer to power.
With all that in prospect for radicals -- that is, the worse, the better -- the
prospect of Joe Biden losing this year is a small price to pay. Actually, for them, it's no
price at all.
In the meantime, for America, there is no better. Only worse.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has released
a video statement telling the American people that the
accusations he is now facing
of touching women in inappropriate ways without their consent is the product of changing "social norms", assuring everyone that
he will indeed be adjusting to those changes.
And thank goodness. For a minute there, I was worried Biden might cave under the pressure of a looming scandal and decline to
run for president on the grounds that it could cripple his campaign and leave America facing another four years of Donald Trump.
Here are nine good reasons why I hope Joe Biden runs for president, and why you should support him too:
1. It's his turn.
It's Biden's turn to be president. He's spent years playing second fiddle while other leading Democrats hogged all the limelight,
and that's not fair. He's been waiting very patiently. Come on.
2. Most Qualified Candidate Ever.
If Joe Biden secures the Democratic Party nomination for president, he would be the Most Qualified Candidate Ever to run for
office. His service as a US Senator and a Vice President has given him unparalleled experience priming him for the most powerful
elected office in the world. Everything Biden has done throughout his entire career proves that he'd make a great Commander-in-Chief.
3. He's closely associated with a popular Democratic president.
You think Biden, you think Obama. You think Obama, you think greatness. You can't spend that much time with a great Democratic
president without absorbing his greatness yourself. It's called osmosis.
4. You liked Obama, didn't you?
Biden was part of the Obama administration. Remember the Obama administration? It was magical, right? If you want more of that,
vote Biden.
5. But Trump!
Do you want Trump to win the next election? You know he'll shatter all our norms and literally end the world if he does, right?
You should be terrified of the possibility of Trump winning in 2020, and if you are, you should want him running against Joe Biden.
What's the alternative? Nominating some crazy unelectable socialist like Bernie Sanders? Might as well just hand Trump the victory
now, then. Anyone who wants to beat Trump must fall in line behind the Most Qualified Candidate Ever.
6. Iraq wasn't so bad.
Okay, maybe some of his past foreign policy positions look bad in hindsight, but come on. Pushing for the Iraq war was what
everyone was doing back in those days. It was all the rage. We all made it through, right? I mean, most of us?
7. This is happening whether you like it or not.
We're doing this. We're going to push Joe Biden through whether you like it or not, and we can do it the easy way or the hard
way. Just relax, take deep breaths, and think about a nice place far away from here. Don't struggle. This will be over before
you know it. We'll use plenty of lube.
8. Just vote for him.
Just vote for him, you insolent little shits. Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? You think you're entitled to a bunch
of ponies and unicorns like healthcare and drinkable water? You only think that because you're a bunch of racist, sexist homophobes.
You will vote for who we tell you to or we'll spend the next four years calling you all Russian agents and screaming about Susan
Sarandon.
9. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Honestly, what could possibly go wrong? It's not like the Most Qualified Candidate Ever could manage to lose an election to
some oafish reality TV star. Hell, Biden could beat Trump in his sleep. He could even skip campaigning in Michigan, Wisconsin
and Pennsylvania and still win by a landslide, because those states are in the bag. There's no way he could fail, barring some
unprecedented and completely unforeseeable freak occurrences from way out of left field that nobody could possibly have anticipated.
The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain... Starting With A
Crime by Tyler
Durden Tue, 06/02/2020 - 22:45 Authored by Jonathan Turley,
Yesterday, the attorney hired by Judge Emmet Sullivan responded on his behalf to
defend his controversial orders in the case to invite third parties to argue the merits of the
motion to dismiss as well as raising his option to substitute his own criminal charge of
perjury against Flynn. The Justice Department responded with a 45-page filing to a
three-judge appeals court panel.
The attention will now focus on the appearance tomorrow of former Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein in the Senate. For me, the most pertinent question is why this investigation
continued past December and seemed to become to a search for a crime rather than the
investigation of any crime or collusion with Russia.
"Remember Ambassador, you're not talking to a diplomat, you're talking to a soldier."
When President Trump
's incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn , said those words to then-Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, he also spoke to American intelligence agents listening in on the
call. For three years, congressional Democrats have assured us Flynn's calls to Kislyak were so
disturbing that they set off alarms in the closing days of the Obama administration.
They were right. The newly released transcripts of Flynn's calls are deeply disturbing --
not for their evidence of criminality or collusion but for the total absence of such evidence.
The transcripts, declassified Friday, strongly support new investigations by both the Justice
Department and by Congress, starting with next week's Senate testimony by former Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
It turns out Flynn's calls are not just predictable but even commendable at points. When the
Obama administration hit the Russians with sanctions just before leaving office, the incoming
Trump administration sought to avoid a major conflict at the very start of its term. Flynn
asked the Russian to focus on "common enemies" in order to seek cooperation in the Middle East.
The calls covered a variety of issues, including the sanctions.
What was not discussed was any quid pro quo or anything untoward or unlawful. Flynn stated
what was already known to be Trump policy in seeking a new path with Russia. Flynn did not
offer to remove sanctions but, rather, encouraged the Russians to respond in a reciprocal,
commensurate manner if they felt they had to respond.
The calls, and Flynn's identity, were leaked by as many as nine officials as the Obama
administration left office -- a serious federal crime, given their classified status . The most
chilling aspect of the transcripts, however, is the lack of anything chilling in the calls
themselves. Flynn is direct with Kislyak in trying to tone down the rhetoric and avoid
retaliatory moves. He told Kislyak, "l am a very practical guy, and it's about solutions. It's
about very practical solutions that we're -- that we need to come up with here." Flynn said he
understood the Russians might wish to retaliate for the Obama sanctions but encouraged them not
to escalate the conflict just as the Trump administration took office.
Kislyak later spoke with Flynn again and confirmed that Moscow agreed to tone down the
conflict in the practical approach laid out by Flynn. The media has focused on Flynn's later
denial of discussing sanctions; the transcripts confirm he did indeed discuss sanctions.
However, the Justice Department has not sought to dismiss criminal charges against him because
he told the truth but because his statements did not meet a key element of materiality for the
crime and were the result of troubling actions by high-ranking officials.
The real question is why the FBI continued to investigate Flynn in the absence of any crime
or evidence of collusion. In December 2016, investigators had found no evidence of any crime by
Flynn. They wanted to shut down the investigation; they were overruled by superiors, including
FBI special agent Peter Strzok, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Director James Comey. Strzok
told the investigators to keep the case alive, and McCabe is described as "cutting off" another
high-ranking official who questioned the basis for continuing to investigate Flynn. All three
officials were later fired, and all three were later found by career officials to have engaged
in serious misconduct as part of the Russia investigation.
Recently disclosed information revealed that Comey and President Obama discussed using the
Logan Act as a pretense for a criminal charge. The Logan Act criminalizes private negotiations
with foreign governments; it is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used
successfully against any U.S. citizen since the earliest days of the Republic. Its use against
the incoming national security adviser would have been absurd. Yet, that unconstitutional crime
was the only crime Comey could come up with, long before there was a false statement by Flynn
regarding his calls.
Not until February 2017 did Comey circumvent long-standing protocols and order an interview
with Flynn. Comey later bragged that he "probably wouldn't have gotten away with it" in other
administrations, but he sent "a couple guys over" to question Flynn, who was settling into his
new office as national security adviser. We learned recently that Strzok discussed trying to
get Flynn to give false or misleading information in that interview, to enable a criminal
charge, and that FBI lawyer Lisa Page suggested agents "just casually slip" in a reference to
the criminal provision for lying and then get Flynn to slip up on the details.
Flynn did slip up. While investigators said they were not convinced he intentionally lied,
he gave a false statement. Later, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Flynn with that false
statement, to pressure him into cooperating; Flynn fought the case into virtual bankruptcy but
agreed to plead guilty when Mueller threatened to prosecute his son, too.
The newly released transcripts reveal the lack of a foundation for that charge. Courts have
held that the materiality requirement for such a charge requires that misstatements be linked
to the particular "subject of the investigation." The Justice Department found that the false
statement in February 2017 was not material "to any viable counterintelligence investigation --
or any investigation, for that matter -- initiated by the FBI." In other words, by that time,
these FBI officials had no crime under investigation but were, instead, looking for a crime.
The question is: Why?
So the transcripts confirm there never was a scintilla of criminal conduct or evidence of
collusion against Flynn before or during these calls. Indeed, there was no viable criminal
investigation to speak of when Comey sent "a couple guys over" to entrap Flynn; they already
had the transcripts and the knowledge that Flynn had done nothing wrong. Nevertheless, facing
the release of these transcripts, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
bizarrely maintained that "Flynn posed a severe counterintelligence risk" because he could be
blackmailed over his false statement.
Putting aside the lack of prior evidence of criminality, Schiff ignores that there were
transcripts to prevent such blackmail. Indeed, in the interview, Flynn indicated he assumed
there was a transcript, and leaked media reports indicated that various officials were familiar
with the content of the calls. The key to blackmail would have been for the Russians to have
information that others did not have.
Ironically, in his calls with Kislyak, Flynn expressly sought a more frank, honest
relationship with Russia. He told Kislyak "we have to stop talking past each other on -- so
that means that we have to understand exactly what it is that we want to try to achieve, okay?"
That is a question that should now be directed at the FBI, to understand what it was trying to
achieve by continuing an investigation long after it ran out of crimes to investigate.
So one of key players of Russiagate gaslighting and Flynn entrapment trying the same dirty trick again. Nice...
Notable quotes:
"... "We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all wrestling with that have to be addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different. And they're probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience this is right out of the Russian playbook as well." ..."
"... "I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form." ..."
President Barack Obama's former national security adviser Susan Rice suggested without evidence that the Russians could be behind
the violent demonstrations that have taken place across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd.
Speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer Sunday, Rice said:
"We have peaceful protesters focused on the very real pain and disparities that we're all wrestling with that have to be
addressed, and then we have extremists who've come to try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different.
And they're probably also, I would bet based on my experience, I'm not reading the intelligence these days, but based on my experience
this is right out of the Russian playbook as well."
"I would not be surprised to learn that they have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I
wouldn't be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form."
Rice admits she's not reading the intelligence anymore, so what makes her think the Russians are behind this?
She doesn't offer much more in the way of evidence for her assertion, other than that the Russians are the Democrats' always-present
bogeyman, ever ready from behind
their poorly translated social media posts to unleash mayhem upon the U.S.
Ever since the election of President Donald Trump, Democrats have blamed Russians for the outcome of the 2016 election.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller found evidence that Russian-linked accounts spent
a small amount of money placing social media ads for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election, but there's nothing to suggest
their efforts were successful. The Department of Justice abruptly dropped its prosecution of a Russian-based troll farm, days before
trial. Mueller also did not find evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election.
Although the claims of Russian "collusion" in the 2016 election were eventually found to be nearly totally baseless, Rice's new
narrative, that Russians support 2020's post-Floyd rioting, appears to be even more fact-threadbare.
Rice's claim drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
Eoin Higgens, a senior editor at Common Dreams, tweeted "you cannot make
this sh– up. F -- - deranged" while former U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy
tweeted "there she goes again."
There's a reason Rice's claim was not taken seriously -- besides the lack of evidence for the Russian meddling narrative that has
dominated the nation's political life since 2016, there's also the sheer ineptitude of the actual Russian trolling and ads themselves.
Just look at this ad the Russians funded from the 2016 election cycle for a taste of how convincing those Russians and their social
media campaigns can be:
I haven't seen condemnation across the political spectrum. There are a few hard-left progressives like Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi,
and Glenn Greenwald of course, but they have always hated the RussiaGate conspiracy. I won't be holding my breath for any of the
#Resistance puppets castigate Rice. They can't, because #RussiaGate is foundational to their existence.
Y'all are really confusing me! During the civil rights marches, conservatives warned people that the "agitators" were Russian
tools. Now, you say that's crazy talk!.
Rice asserts that civic agitation is ". . .right out of the Russian playbook. . ." Let's presume she's had a peek into the
Russia playbook. Her statement can be falsified by the good fact checkers at this website!
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't be more surprised than Rice to learn that Russia is still in the outside agitator business.
Just a suggestion, of course. Someone as patriotic as Rice really should check it out.
The saddest thing is that she's been too lazy to come up even with the most jury-rigged conspiracy theory as to why Russians
would need it, despite the fact that emotional reaction-oriented rhetorical turds to... sculpture such a theory (albeit a very
debunkable one) are floating on the surface. A most deplorable intellectual sloth. What to expect from neolibs/neocons, though?
They're always like that. Say some folderol - and then go hiding in the kind Grandpa Bolton's venerable moustɑche.
I don't know which idea is more laughable - Black Americans are so lacking in agency that they aren't even responsible for their
own protests, or, the Russians are so diabolical that they can turn anyone and everyone into the Manchurian Candidate.
More likely, Susan Rice can't admit that her woke ideology has limitations. She needs a scapegoat so badly that she'll babble
any nonsense to accuse one. Hard to believe she was once the National Security Adviser.
I read on a libertarian oriented forum that the current protests are actually being done by the Chinese. Apparently, the Soviets
(Russians) instigated the riots in the late 60s.
Where are all the stars you ask" afterwards they will come out with concerts on TV, speeches big speeches that they real do care
you hear me, PC BS they will look tragic this time, all the makeup in the world won;t hide their deception, arrogance, utter idiocy
in White Towers.
Transcripts of under oath statements before the House Intelligence committee revealed neither Susan Rice nor other Obama administration
officials had any evidence of Russian meddling in 2016. Of course all proceeded with spreading baseless inuendo for years before
and afterwards.
So if not under oath anything Susan Rice alleges is simply not worth listening to.
Seems like so many presidents have been led into terrible foreign policy decisions by their Blob advisors...Obama by Susan Rice,
Samantha Power, and Hillary; Dubya by Cheney and Rumsfield; Carter by Zbiggy, Ford and Nixon (both who should have known better)
by Kissinger.
Susan Rice is more ignorant and has far lower intelligence than I ever suspected or she is playing politics and lying. The Russians
have no motive. The Russians have no hand to play. The Chinese who have bribed a long list of democratic politicians have a very
significant motive and a major hand to play in fomenting riots and race animosity...as a means to influence the November election
away from Trump to Biden.
Looks like regular consultation between Russians and incoming administration to me. Also it was lame duck President who unilaterally
decided to up his ante against Russians (criminally gaslighting the US public), expelled Russian diplomats to make the gaslighting
more plausible, and seized Russian diplomatic property in violation of international norms. It was Obama who unleashed
FBI dogs like Strzok and McCabe on Trump.
Russia later retaliated in a very modest way without seizing any US property, they just cut the level of the USA diplomatic
personnel in Russia to the level of Russian personnel in the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message. ..."
More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson
I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media when it comes to
reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing miscarriage of justice in bringing
charges against him. The documents declassified and released by the DNI last Friday exonerate
General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's
release of the declassified summaries and transcripts was overshadowed quickly by rioting in
Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the lede), the documents reveal General Flynn
as the consummate professional keen on serving his country and the Russian Ambassador as
disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama administration.
The declassified material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence
actually consists of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of
conversations for 22, 23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are
the full transcripts of the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and
January 12 and January 19, 2017.
To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded
between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by
Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in
response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.
Here are the specifics of those calls.
December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians,
responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia not to support the Egyptian UN
Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn make calls to most members of the
UN Security Council).
December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with
President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that
the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not
achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical
Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we
will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."
December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."
December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call. First, Kislyak wants to
discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the President-elect that the
Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the Security Council. Flynn says it
is good. Second, the Russians are very interested with working with the President-elect's team
to help the peace process in Syria. Thirdly, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first
conversation on January 21 rst between the presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump
and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in
right now! . . . . depending on what actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current
issue of the cyber stuff, . . . they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the
country, I understand all that . . . I know you have to have some sort of action, but to only
make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into
something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the
situation where we everybody goes back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We
don't need that right now. We need cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about
what we are going to do because we have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.
December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And
I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against
Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to respond we have
decided not to act now because, its because people are dissatisfied with the lost . . .
elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responds, "we are not going to agree on
everything, you know that, but, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And
we have to figure out how, how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the
temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in
Russia.
January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his
condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown
causes.
January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference
on Syria in Astana.
January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone
call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.
"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible
chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency
hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the
subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.
From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be
inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign
policy decisions immediately.
In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS
activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with
the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a
future US delegation.
It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time
job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian
peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say
President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash &
demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was
inappropriate.
Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing
informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not
party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria
since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and
Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has
now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From
that point of view what was Flynn's role in this
I wonder sometimes whether the new administration, from Trump downwards, realised just
what they were up against after that unexpected election victory.
Yes, I think that evidence thus far revealed suggests that the sedition was far along, and
this even before Trump's victory - an insurance policy, if you will, and way beyond any
opposition research, as much of the "information", if not at root fabricated, was otherwise
illegally gathered.
And immediate that election victory, things went into overdrive as the seditionists'
panicked, doubling and tripling down on their illegal actions to frame a projected
impeachment narrative as their next tactic. I hesitate to call it their next strategy, as it
was too knee jerk to be characterized in that fashion.
So, no, I think that the new Trump administration had little idea of just how this
transition of administration was, counter to most prior precedents, planned to be
undermined with the full intent to invalidate the election of President Trump, and if
possible, to overturn it .
This was sedition on multiple levels, crimes deliberately embarked upon to destroy the
Constitution and the Republic by any means that these traitors deemed efficacious.
I believe Trump knew he was being spied on as Adm. Rogers informed him and thereafter he
moved his transition organization away from Trump Tower.
In any case why did Trump throw Flynn under the bus? In hindsight that was a huge mistake.
Another huge mistake in hindsight was not cleaning house at the DOJ, FBI and the intel
agencies early. That allowed Rosenstein and Wray to get Mueller going and created the pretext
of the investigation to bury all the incriminating evidence. Trump never declassified
anything himself which he could have and broke open the plot. He then gave Barr all
classification authority who sat on it for a year. Look how fast Ric Grenell declassified
stuff. There was no "sources & methods" the usual false justification.
It is unconscionable how severely Flynn was screwed over. Why is Wray still there? How
many of the plotter cohort still remain?
Looks like regular consultation between Russians and incoming administration to me. Also it was lame duck President who unilaterally
decided to up his ante against Russians (criminally gaslighting the US public), expelled Russian diplomats to make the gaslighting
more plausible, and seized Russian diplomatic property in violation of international norms. It was Obama who unleashed
FBI dogs like Strzok and McCabe on Trump.
Russia later retaliated in a very modest way without seizing any US property, they just cut the level of the USA diplomatic
personnel in Russia to the level of Russian personnel in the USA.
More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson
I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of the media when it comes to
reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing miscarriage of justice in bringing
charges against him. The documents declassified and released by the DNI last Friday exonerate
General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's
release of the declassified summaries and transcripts was overshadowed quickly by rioting in
Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the lede), the documents reveal General Flynn
as the consummate professional keen on serving his country and the Russian Ambassador as
disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama administration.
The declassified material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence
actually consists of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of
conversations for 22, 23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are
the full transcripts of the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and
January 12 and January 19, 2017.
To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded
between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by
Ambassador Kislyak -- Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in
response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.
Here are the specifics of those calls.
December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians,
responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia not to support the Egyptian UN
Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn make calls to most members of the
UN Security Council).
December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with
President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that
the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not
achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical
Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we
will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."
December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."
December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call. First, Kislyak wants to
discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the President-elect that the
Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the Security Council. Flynn says it
is good. Second, the Russians are very interested with working with the President-elect's team
to help the peace process in Syria. Thirdly, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first
conversation on January 21 rst between the presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump
and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in
right now! . . . . depending on what actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current
issue of the cyber stuff, . . . they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the
country, I understand all that . . . I know you have to have some sort of action, but to only
make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into
something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the
situation where we everybody goes back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We
don't need that right now. We need cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about
what we are going to do because we have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.
December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And
I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against
Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to respond we have
decided not to act now because, its because people are dissatisfied with the lost . . .
elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responds, "we are not going to agree on
everything, you know that, but, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And
we have to figure out how, how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the
temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in
Russia.
January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his
condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown
causes.
January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference
on Syria in Astana.
January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone
call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.
"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible
chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency
hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the
subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.
From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be
inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign
policy decisions immediately.
In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS
activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with
the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a
future US delegation.
It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time
job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian
peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say
President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash &
demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was
inappropriate.
Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing
informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not
party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria
since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and
Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has
now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From
that point of view what was Flynn's role in this
I wonder sometimes whether the new administration, from Trump downwards, realised just
what they were up against after that unexpected election victory.
Yes, I think that evidence thus far revealed suggests that the sedition was far along, and
this even before Trump's victory - an insurance policy, if you will, and way beyond any
opposition research, as much of the "information", if not at root fabricated, was otherwise
illegally gathered.
And immediate that election victory, things went into overdrive as the seditionists'
panicked, doubling and tripling down on their illegal actions to frame a projected
impeachment narrative as their next tactic. I hesitate to call it their next strategy, as it
was too knee jerk to be characterized in that fashion.
So, no, I think that the new Trump administration had little idea of just how this
transition of administration was, counter to most prior precedents, planned to be
undermined with the full intent to invalidate the election of President Trump, and if
possible, to overturn it .
This was sedition on multiple levels, crimes deliberately embarked upon to destroy the
Constitution and the Republic by any means that these traitors deemed efficacious.
I believe Trump knew he was being spied on as Adm. Rogers informed him and thereafter he
moved his transition organization away from Trump Tower.
In any case why did Trump throw Flynn under the bus? In hindsight that was a huge mistake.
Another huge mistake in hindsight was not cleaning house at the DOJ, FBI and the intel
agencies early. That allowed Rosenstein and Wray to get Mueller going and created the pretext
of the investigation to bury all the incriminating evidence. Trump never declassified
anything himself which he could have and broke open the plot. He then gave Barr all
classification authority who sat on it for a year. Look how fast Ric Grenell declassified
stuff. There was no "sources & methods" the usual false justification.
It is unconscionable how severely Flynn was screwed over. Why is Wray still there? How
many of the plotter cohort still remain?
I never ceased to be amazed at the dishonesty and laziness of
the media when it comes to reporting anything about Michael Flynn and the astonishing
miscarriage of justice in bringing charges against him. The documents declassified and released
by the DNI last Friday exonerate General Flynn and expose the FBI and the Mueller team as
gargantuan liars. Even though Friday's release of the declassified summaries and transcripts
was overshadowed quickly by rioting in Minnesota (you know, if it bleeds and burns it is the
lede), the documents reveal General Flynn as the consummate professional keen on serving his
country and the Russian Ambassador as disgusted by the petulance and arrogance of the Obama
administration.
The declassified
material released by newly installed Director for National Intelligence actually consists
of two different sets of documents--First, there are five summaries of conversations for 22,
23, 29 (two on the 29th) December 2016 and 5 January. Second, there are the full transcripts of
the conversations for December 23, December 29, December 31 in 2016 and January 12 and January
19, 2017.
To summarize--a total of eight different calls between Kislyak and Flynn were recorded
between December 22, 2016 and January 19, 2017. Five of the eight calls were initiated by
Ambassador Kislyak--Mike Flynn only called Kislyak three times and two of those were in
response to calls from Kislyak, who requested a call back or left a message.
Here are the specifics of those calls.
December 22, 2016--This call apparently was made by Michael Flynn to the Russians,
responding to a request from President-elect Trump to ask Russia to not support the Egyptian UN
Security Council resolution condemning Israel. (Note--Flynn made calls to most members of the
UN Security Council).
December 23, 2016--Ambassador Kislyak calls Michael Flynn to report on his conversation with
President Putin regarding the previous day's request. Michael Flynn emphasizes to Kislyak that
the mutual goal is/should be stability in the Middle East. Flynn tells Kislyak, "We will not
achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical
Islamist crowd." Kislyak remarks, "responding to your telephone call, and our conversations we
will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations."
December 29, 2016--Kislyak calls Flynn and leaves a simple message, "need to talk."
December 29, 2016--Michael Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call.
First, Kislyak wants to discuss the Middle East policy. The Russians want to convey to the
President-elect that the Russians will not be supporting the American colleagues at the
Security Council. Flynn says it is good.
Second, the Russians are very interesting with working with the President-elect's team to
help the peace process in Syria.
Third, the Kremlin would like to . . . have a first conversation on January 21st between the
presidents. Putin's idea is to congratulate Trump and discuss issues. . . . Flynn tells
Kislyak: Do not allow this administration to box us in right now! . . . . depending on what
actions the Obama Administrations takes over this current issue of the cyber stuff, . . .
they're gonna dismiss some number of Russians out of the country, I understand all that . . . I
know you have to have some sort of action, but to only make it reciprocal; don't go any further
than you have to because I don't want us to get into something that have to escalate to
tit-for-tat. . . . I really do not want us to get into the situation where we everybody goes
back and forth and everybody had to be a tough guy here. We don't need that right now. We need
cool heads to prevail. And we need to be very steady about what we are going to do because we
have absolutely a common threat in the Middle East.
December 31, 2016--Russian Ambassador Kislyak calls General Flynn. Kislyak tells Flynn, "And
I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only against
Russia, but also against the president elect. . . . and with all our rights to responds we have
decided not to act now because, its because the Obama people are dissatisfied that they lost
the elections and, and its very deplorable. . . . Flynn responded, "we are not going to agree
on everything, you know that, but I think that we have a lot of things in common. A lot. And we
have to figure out how to achieve those things, . . .and be smart about it and keep the
temperature down globally, as well as not just here in the United States and also over in
Russia.
January 5, 2017--Lt. General Mike FLYNN phones Ambassador Sergey KISLYAK to express his
condolences on the death of GRU Director Igor SERGUN, who died unexpectedly today from unknown
causes.
January 12, 2017--Mike Flynn returns Kislyak's phone call and discusses possible conference
on Syria in Astana, Kazakstan.
January 19, 2017--Kislyak leaves voicemail for Flynn, inquiring about scheduling of a phone
call between Putin and Trump after the inauguration.
Now, let us take a new look at the Mueller team's Statement of Offense . The Mueller team got
a key fact wrong. According to the Statement of Offense:
b. On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.
Nope. The date was 29 December 2016. Screwing up a date is not an end-of-the-world mistake,
but it is inexcusable nonetheless.
Let me remind you what Michael Flynn told FBI Agents Strzok and Pientka when they asked if
he "might have asked Kislyak not to escalate the situation, to keep the Russian response
reciprocal." Flynn said, according to the second draft of the FBI 302 recounting the
conversation, "NOT REALLY, I DON'T REMEMBER."
You can read for yourself Flynn's entire exchange with Kislyak. It covered a variety of
topics. It was not the only issue Flynn was dealing with as the incoming National Security
Advisor. He had lots of conversations, not only with Kislyak, but with other diplomats from
other countries. The fact that he did not precisely remember what he said to Kislyak should not
be surprising.
The real question is why did the FBI withhold the transcript of this conversation? They
could have said, "here is the transcript of your conversation with Ambassador Kislyak, is that
an accurate account?" But they did not. I defy any of you to recall with 100% accuracy a
conversation you had with someone almost a month earlier.
The most fascinating revelation from this transcripts is Ambassador Kislyak stating that
Russia was aware of the Obama Administration's efforts to portray normal diplomatic contacts
between Moscow and the Trump campaign as something nefarious and that Obama was targeting
Trump. Kislyak said:
"And I just wanted to tell you that we found that these actions [were] targeted not only
against Russia, but also against the president elect."
Kislyak and his bosses understood perfectly that the Obama team was attempting a silent coup
and were willing to risk conflict with Russia in order to sell that lie. This is beyond
outrageous on the part of Obama and his crew of white collared criminals. It is sedition. It is
treason.
No honest person can read these transcripts without acknowledging that Flynn spoke as a
diplomat intent on serving the interests of America. He was not engaged in treachery, as
alleged by the corrupt Judge Emmett Sullivan. In fact, Flynn held his tongue with regard to the
Obama crew. He could have trashed them and spoke ill of them. But he did not.
These transcripts show Flynn as a man of honor. A genuine professional. They also expose the
fraud perpetrated on the American public by an FBI and Special Prosecutor intent on smearing
Flynn as acting on behalf of the Russians. Michael Flynn did no such thing.
"Before General Flynn's voce message turns on, there is an open line, barely audible
chat.
Someone asks Chernyshev, "Which agency are we talking about?" Chernyshev asks as to
confirm if he understands the question and responds in the same time: "Which Agency
hackers
did the hacking? Believe me, Americans did hacked this all."
The full exchange between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak throws much light on the
subsequent Sunday morning mis-speaking by the Vice-President Pence.
From the first telephone call, Flynn tells Kislyak that President-elect Trump will only be
inaugurated 3-weeks hence. Therefore Trump in late-December cannot formally make foreign
policy decisions immediately.
In a later exchange about Russia's proposed Astana Peace Conference to de-escalate ISIS
activity In Syria, Flynn responds that Russia has Trump's backing to begin preparations with
the Syrians, Turks et al. On his part, Flynn will begin pencilling-in who would be on a
future US delegation.
It goes without saying that Vice President-elect Pence, during this period had a full-time
job marshaling the Transition and may not have been in the loop on these tentative Russian
peace initiatives. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show, Pence could correctly say
President Trump had no "official communications" with the Kremlin. But to later trash &
demand Flynn's dismissal for "lying to him" about the informal phone calls was
inappropriate.
Pence could easily have told Americans that President-elect Trump was establishing
informal relations, through multiple phone calls, with world leaders and he, Pence, was not
party to all of them. No one in the fledgling Trump Administration was lying to him.
Hi Larry.why not tackle this knot from the Russian end.Russia has been fighting in Syria
since jisr al shugour massacre in the groves.There naval base on the med was threatened and
Gazprom stood to lose control of energy resources flowing out of the me too Europe.That has
now been achieved.Not only that but Wagner group are in Libyan with Russian air support.From
that point of view what was Flynn's role in this
Another is the political assassination of Gen. Flynn. There was indeed a coordinated
conspiracy to find a scapegoat to prevent the shifting from a pro-China/anti-Russia policy to
a pro-Russia/China-as-actual-competitor policy under a DJT presidency.
If you think none of the above carry any weight and you could play a game of shuttlecock
with them not caring which is brought forth, then you might think along Jackrabbit's lines
that the DJT-phenomenon is complete bullshit.
I would argue that the line that DJT is some working-class hero is probably bullshit, but
when it comes to two warring factions of elites fighting over the direction of America, the
struggle right now is very real.
"... What is happening now is the exact same thing as Hong Kong. In any given instance of mass revolt, you have two warring factions, usually funded at the top by diametrically opposed elites. ..."
"... In Hong Kong, it is pro-western, old-guard/money versus Chinese new-guard. ..."
"... Look at the degree of organization (or lack thereof) which was able to politically assassinate Gen. Flynn! You had the dem establishment and billionaires like the Clintons, Obama-faction sycophants all the way up to the top. ..."
You are completely wrong, of course. What is happening now is the exact same thing as Hong Kong. In any given instance of mass revolt, you have two warring factions, usually funded at the top by diametrically opposed elites.
In Hong Kong, it is pro-western, old-guard/money versus Chinese new-guard. In America, we have the old-guard/money represented currently by the DJT-phenomenon, meaning Anti-globalist nationalists, and,
on the other side, you have new-money internationalists and neolibs represented by billionaires, big-tech, the democratic party
and garden-variety globalists.
Look at the degree of organization (or lack thereof) which was able to politically assassinate Gen. Flynn! You had the dem
establishment and billionaires like the Clintons, Obama-faction sycophants all the way up to the top.
You think that this event is entirely grassroots? Give me a f*cking break, vk. You are such a blatantly obvious Chinese shill, no doubt probably employed by globalist entities,
that the fact you are unable to employ an effective and probable analysis on these current "protests" reaffirm to me exactly what
you are and what you stand for.
You could also have the same oligarchs funding both sides in a divide and conquer strategy. This is a common strategy that
has been used in Turkey among others in the runup to the 1980 coup. It was also used by the US and Israel in their funding of
both sides in the Iran/Iraq war in the 80s.
In the former it was used to ramp up violence to justify a military coup. That is very probable here, except that martial law
might be the objective. Similar to the Iran/Iraq, the stoking of violence between liberals and conservatives may simply be to
wear them out for when the economy truly tanks to justify in the minds of the sheeple a greater oppression of demonstrations in
future.
US is becoming like Israel even more. Considering same people rule both countries, and same people train cops in both of them,
is it surprising 99%-ers in US are becoming treated like Palestinians?
Margot Cleveland ( @ProfMJCleveland ) "What Flynn didn't say is treason, but Obama saying
he'll have more flexibility after the election is diplomacy. "
Scenario: Obama wanted a hot Russians confrontation incident to land on the Resolute Desk
the same day Obama moved out and Trump moved in. But the Russians did not take Obama's bait
after expelling the Russians for" election interference"..
Why not - something is up - snoop on Flynn to find out - is Trump cutting a side deal with
Putin, and/or violating the Logan Act - gotcha either way, So Obama thinks. Which was never
his strong suit.
So Flynn is gone and who benefits? The Israelis got their capitol and the word 'occupied'
decoupled from territories, which they didn't need Flynn for, and the common enemy policy
against ISIS and Astana/Syria peace plan are both dead.
The Biden campaign has quietly canceled a fundraiser headlined by
Andrew Weissman - former special counsel Robert Mueller's 'attack dog' lawyer who
hand-picked the so-called '13 angry Democrats.'
Weissman, who attended Hillary Clinton's election night party in 2016, donated to Obama and
the DNC, yet somehow conducted an unbiased investigation that turned up snake-eyes, was set to
do a June 2 "fireside chat" with Biden , according to the
WSJ , which notes that the fundraiser was pulled right after it was posted late last week -
shortly after the Trump campaign began to latch onto it.
Yes, there's more value in keeping the lie going that the mueller special counsel hasn't
already been established beyond any doubt as a fraudulent and deeply unethical partisan
takedown scheme against Trump https://t.co/5wuFYpgggr https://t.co/mxaHomTaQO
Weissman - known as the "architect" of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul
Manafort - notably reached out to a
Ukrainian oligarch for dirt on Trump and his team days after FBI agent Peter Strzok texted
"There's no big there there" regarding the Trump investigation in exchange for 'resolving the
Firtash case' in Chicago, in which he was charged in 2014 with corruption and bribery linked to
a US aerospace deal.
According to investigative journalist John Solomon, Firtash turned down Weissman's offer
because he didn't have credible information or evidence against Trump , Manafort, or anyone
else.
US Attorney for West Texas John Bash has been asked by AG Bill Bar to review the Obama
administration's 'unmasking' practices from before and after the 2016 presidential election,
according
Fox News , citing the DOJ.
Meanwhile, DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Fox News '
"Hannity" on Wednesday that US Attorney John Durham is also looking into the "unmasking," but
that Bash has been assigned to dig deeper .
"Unmasking inherently isn't wrong, but certainly, the frequency, the motivation and the
reasoning behind unmasking can be problematic, and when you're looking at unmasking as part of
a broader investigation-- like John Durham's investigation-- looking specifically at who was
unmasking whom, can add a lot to our understanding about motivation and big picture events,"
said Kupec.
Unmasking is a tool frequently used during the course of intelligence work and occurs
after U.S. citizens' conversations are incidentally picked up in conversations with foreign
officials who are being monitored by the intelligence community. The U.S. citizens'
identities are supposed to be protected if their participation is incidental and no
wrongdoing is suspected. However, officials can determine the U.S. citizens' names through a
process that is supposed to safeguard their rights . In the typical process, when officials
are requesting the unmasking of an American, they do not necessarily know the identity of the
person in advance.
Republicans became highly suspicious of the number of unmasking requests made by the Obama
administration concerning Flynn, and have questioned whether other Trump associates were
singled out. -
Fox News
In short, Bash - a trusted operator within the Trump administration - will dig even deeper
into the Obama administration's use of unmasking against its political opponents.
Looks like Strzok and Page played larger role in Obamagate/Russiagate then it was assumed
initially
Notable quotes:
"... Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House. ..."
"... Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic. ..."
"... "He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017, relating his conversation with Priestap. ..."
"... The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue an interview where agents might catch him in a lie. ..."
"... "The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one investigator with direct knowledge told me. ..."
"... Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened. ..."
"... "I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn prosecution," Ray told Fox News . ..."
"... April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama administration blames his management style for the departure. ..."
"... Jan. 3, 2017: Strzok and Page engage in the text messages about Obama's daily briefing and the concerns about giving the Flynn intercept cuts to the White House. ..."
"... Jan. 4, 2017: Lead agent in Flynn Crossfire Razor probe prepares closing memo recommending the case be shut down for lack of derogatory evidence. Strzok texts agent asking him to stop the closing memo because the "7th floor" leadership of the FBI is now involved. ..."
"... Jan. 5, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates attends Russia briefing with Obama at the White House and is stunned to learn Obama already knows about the Flynn-Kislyak intercept . Then-FBI Director James Comey claims Clapper told the president, but Clapper has denied telling Obama. ..."
"... Investigators are trying to determine whether Obama asked for the Flynn intercept or it was offered to him and by whom. They also want to know how many times Comey and Obama talked about Flynn in December 2016 and January 2017. ..."
"... "We need to determine what motivated the FBI on Jan. 4, 2017 to overrule its own agent who believed Flynn was innocent and the probe should be closed," one investigator said. ..."
"... Obama weaponized everything he could, ..."
"... The idea that Obama was the center of anything is misdirection. The 'deep state,' as much as I loathe the term, is nothing but State clerks bent by their sense of self importance, venality in the adherence to 'rules,' and motivated by either their greed or their indignation that their status position is merely relative. ..."
"... The Flynn persecution is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption, illegal surveillance, perjury, money laundering, skimming and sedition. ..."
"... One can only imagine all the times Obama weaponized the intelligence agencies against his political opponents that will never be exposed ..."
"... John and Sarah Carter have knocked it out of the park since the Obama attempted coup started. ..."
"... In Watergate, the underlying crime was "Nixon spied on the Democrats". Everything else was just a question of who did what, and how much. ..."
"... How come there's never any mention of "London Collusion", as if UK interference in U.S. politics and society is quite alright -- even when it's highly detrimental? ..."
"... Brennan went over and met with MI-6 right about the time that Trump announced his candidacy. I think the whole Russia-Collusion thing was their idea and they put Brennan on to it. Set it all up for him, complete with a diagram so he wouldn't **** it up. That's what MI-6 does. ..."
"... MI-6, like Christopher Steele, hated Trump because they BADLY want World Government. Have been sabotaging Brexit for years. ..."
"... It's easier for me to imagine Obama as puppet than a ringleader. He always seemed to be a fake, manufactured sort of person. As if he was focus-group-tested and approved. ..."
Agents fretted sharing Flynn intel with departing Obama White House would become fodder for
'partisan axes to grind.'
Just 17 days before President Trump took office in January 2017, then-FBI
counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok texted bureau lawyer Lisa Page, his mistress, to express
concern about sharing sensitive Russia probe evidence with the departing Obama White House.
Strzok had just engaged in a conversation with his boss, then-FBI Assistant Director William
Priestap, about evidence from the investigation of incoming National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn, codenamed Crossfire Razor, or "CR" for short.
The evidence in question were so-called "tech cuts" from intercepted conversations between
Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to the texts and interviews with
officials familiar with the conversations.
Strzok related Priestap's concerns about the potential the evidence would be politically
weaponized if outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper shared the intercept
cuts with the White House and President Obama, a well-known Flynn critic.
"He, like us, is concerned with over sharing," Strzok texted Page on Jan. 3, 2017,
relating his conversation with Priestap.
"Doesn't want Clapper giving CR cuts to WH. All political, just shows our hand and
potentially makes enemies."
Page seemed less concerned, knowing that the FBI was set in three days to release its
initial assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
"Yeah, but keep in mind we were going to put that in the doc on Friday, with potentially
larger distribution than just the DNI," Page texted back.
Strzok responded, "The question is should we, particularly to the entirety of the lame
duck usic [U.S Intelligence Community] with partisan axes to grind."
That same day Strzok and Page also discussed in text messages a drama involving one of the
Presidential Daily Briefings for Obama.
"Did you follow the drama of the PDB last week?" Strzok asked.
"Yup. Don't know how it ended though," Page responded.
"They didn't include any of it, and Bill [Priestap] didn't want to dissent," Strzok
added.
"Wow, Bill should make sure [Deputy Director] Andy [McCabe] knows about that since he was
consulted numerous times about whether to include the reporting," Page suggested.
You can see the text messages recovered from Strzok's phone here.
The text messages, which were never released to the public by the FBI but were provided to
this reporter in September 2018, have taken on much more significance to both federal and
congressional investigators in recent weeks as the Justice Department has requested that
Flynn's conviction be thrown out and his charges of lying to the FBI about Kislyak
dismissed.
U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of Missouri (special prosecutor for DOJ), the FBI inspection
division, three Senate committees and House Republicans are all investigating the handling of
Flynn's case and whether any crimes were committed or political influence exerted.
The investigators are trying to determine whether Obama's well-known disdain for Flynn, a
career military intelligence officer, influenced the decision by the FBI leadership to reject
its own agent's recommendation to shut down a probe of Flynn in January 2017 and instead pursue
an interview where agents might catch him in a lie.
They also want to know whether the conversation about the PDB involved Flynn and "reporting"
the FBI had gathered by early January 2017 showing the incoming national security adviser was
neither a counterintelligence nor a criminal threat.
"The evidence connecting President Obama to the Flynn operation is getting stronger," one
investigator with direct knowledge told me.
"The bureau knew it did not have evidence to justify that Flynn was either a criminal or
counterintelligence threat and should have shut the case down. But the perception that Obama
and his team would not be happy with that outcome may have driven the FBI to keep the probe
open without justification and to pivot to an interview that left some agents worried
involved entrapment or a perjury trap."
The investigator said more interviews will need to be done to determine exactly what role
Obama's perception of Flynn played in the FBI's decision making.
Recently declassified evidence show a total of 39 outgoing Obama administration officials
sought to unmask Flynn's name in intelligence interviews between Election Day 2016 and
Inauguration Day 2017, signaling a keen interest in Flynn's overseas calls.
Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said Friday that the Flynn matter was at
the very least a "political scandal of the highest order" and could involve criminal charges if
evidence emerges that officials lied or withheld documents to cover up what happened.
"I imagine there are people who are in the know who may well have knowingly withheld
information from the court and from defense counsel in connection with the Michael Flynn
prosecution,"
Ray told Fox News .
"If it turns out that that can be proved, then there are going to be referrals and
potential false statements, and/or perjury prosecutions to hold those, particularly those in
positions of authority, accountable," he added.
Investigators have created the following timeline of key events through documents produced
piecemeal by the FBI over two years:
April 2014: Flynn is forced out as the chief of DIA by Obama after clashing with the
administration over the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIS, and other policies. The Obama
administration blames his management style for the departure.
July 31, 2016:
FBI opens Crossfire Hurricane probe into possible ties between Trump campaign and Russia,
focused on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Flynn is not an initial target of that
probe.
Aug. 15, 2016: Strzok and Page engage in their infamous text exchange about having an
insurance policy just in case Trump should be elected. "I want to believe the path you threw
out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm
afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die
before you're 40," one text reads.
Aug. 16, 2016: FBI opens a sub-case under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella codenamed
Crossfire Razor focused on whether Flynn was wittingly or unwittingly engaged in
inappropriate Russian contact.
Aug. 17, 2016: FBI and DNI provide Trump and Flynn first briefing after winning the
nomination, including on Russia. FBI slips in an agent posing as an assistant for the
briefing to secretly get a read on Flynn for the new investigation, according to the
Justice
Department inspector general report on Russia case. "SSA 1 told us that the briefing
provided him 'the opportunity to gain assessment and possibly some level of familiarity with
[Flynn]. So, should we get to the point where we need to do a subject interview ... would
have that to fall back on,'" the IG report said.
Sept, 2, 2016: While preparing a talking points memo for Obama ahead of a conversation
with Russian leader Vladimir Putin involving Russian election interference, Page texts
Strzok that Obama wants to be read-in on everything the FBI is doing on the Russia
collusion case. "POTUS wants to know everything we're doing," Page texted.
Alastair Crooke
June 24, 2020 © Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Newly unsealed files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case imply that former US President Bill Clinton visited the investor's private island along with "young girls," and that the FBI knew well about the minors' abuse.
