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May 18, 2020 | www.washingtontimes.com
Newly released documents show FBI agents operated on autopilot in 2016 and 2017 while targeting President Trump and his campaign with little or no Justice Department guidance for such a momentous investigation.
Loretta E. Lynch, President Obama's attorney general, said she never knew the FBI was placing wiretaps on a Trump campaign volunteer or using the dossier claims of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to put the entire Trump world under suspicion. Mr. Steele was handled by Fusion GPS and paid with funds from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
"I don't have a recollection of briefings on Fusion GPS or Mr. Steele ," Ms. Lynch told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in October 2017. "I don't have any information on that, and I don't have a recollection being briefed on that."
Under pressure from acting Director of National Intelligence Richard A. Grenell, the committee last week released transcripts of her testimony and that of more than 50 other witnesses in 2017 and 2018, when Republicans controlled the Trump- Russia investigation.
Ms. Lynch also testified that she had no knowledge the FBI had taken the profound step of opening an investigation, led by agent Peter Strzok, into the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.
"Did [ FBI Director James B. Comey] seek permission from you to do the formal opening of the counterintelligence investigation?" Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, asked the former attorney general.
"No, and he ordinarily would not have had to do that," Ms. Lynch answered. "lt would not have come to the attorney general for that."
Mr. Schiff, a fierce defender of the FBI in the Russia probe, seemed taken aback. "Even in the case where you're talking about a campaign for president?" he asked.
"I can't recall if it was discussed or not," Ms. Lynch said. "I just don't have a recollection of that in the meetings that I had with him."
Attorney General William P. Barr has changed the rules. He announced that the attorney general now must approve any FBI decision to investigate a presidential campaign.
Ms. Lynch's testimony adds to the picture of an insular, and sometimes misbehaving, FBI as its agents searched for evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election to damage Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton .
In documents filed by the Justice Department last week, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates expressed dismay that Mr. Comey would dispatch two agents, including Mr. Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, to interview incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn at the White House.
Ms. Yates, interviewed by FBI agents assigned to the Robert Mueller special counsel probe, said Mr. Comey notified her only after the fact.
"Yates was very frustrated in the call with Comey," said the FBI interview report, known as a 302. "She felt a decision to conduct an interview of Flynn should have been coordinated with [the Department of Justice ]."
Ms. Yates told the FBI that the interview was "problematic" because the White House counsel should have been notified.
During his book tour, Mr. Comey bragged that he sent the two agents without such notification by taking advantage of the White House's formative stage. He said he "wouldn't have gotten away with it" in a more seasoned White House.
Mr. Barr filed court papers asking U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to dismiss the Flynn case and his guilty plea to lying to Mr. Strzok about phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Mr. Strzok and other FBI personnel planned the Flynn interview as a near ambush with a goal of prompting him to lie and getting fired, according to new court filings.
Other evidence of an FBI on autopilot: The Justice Department inspector general's report on how the bureau probed the Trump campaign revealed more than a dozen instances of FBI personnel submitting false information in wiretap applications and withholding exculpatory evidence. For example, agents evaded Justice Department scrutiny by not telling their warrant overseer that witnesses had cast doubt on the reliability of the Steele dossier.
The far-fetched dossier was the one essential piece of evidence required to obtain four surveillance warrants on campaign volunteer Carter Page, according to Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz. The Mueller and Horowitz reports have discredited the dossier's dozen conspiracy claims against the president and his allies.
A who's who of Trump- Russia
Mr. Schiff, now chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence , had held on to the declassified transcripts for more than a year. Under pressure from Republicans and Mr. Grenell, he released the 6,000 pages on the hectic day Mr. Barr moved to end the Flynn prosecution.
The closed-door testimony included witnesses such as Mr. Obama's national security adviser, a United Nations ambassador, the nation's top spy and the FBI deputy director. There were also Clinton campaign chieftains and lawyers.
The transcripts' most often-produced headline: Obama investigators never saw evidence of Trump conspiracy between the time the probe was opened until they left office in mid-January 2017.
"I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election," former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told the committee .
Mr. Clapper is a paid CNN analyst who has implied repeatedly and without evidence that Mr. Trump is a Russian spy and a traitor. The Mueller report contained no evidence that Mr. Trump is a Russian agent or election conspirator.
Mr. Schiff told the country repeatedly that he had seen evidence of Trump collusion that went beyond circumstantial. Mr. Mueller did not.
Mr. Schiff was a big public supporter of Mr. Steele 's dossier, which relied on a Moscow main source and was fed by deliberate Kremlin disinformation against Mr. Trump, according to the Horowitz report.
Trump Tower
One of Mr. Schiff's pieces of evidence of a conspiracy "in plain sight" is the meeting Donald Trump Jr. took with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016.
The connections are complicated but, simply put, a Russian friend of the Trumps' said she might have dirt on Mrs. Clinton . At the time, Ms. Veselnitskaya was in New York representing a rich Russian accused by the Justice Department of money laundering. To investigate, she hired Fusion GPS -- the same firm that retained Mr. Steele to damage the Trump campaign.
The meeting was brief and seemed to be a ruse to enable Ms. Veselnitskaya to pitch an end to Obama-era economic sanctions that hurt her client. Attending were campaign adviser Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Anatoli Samochornov. Mr. Samochornov is a dual citizen of Russia and the U.S. who serves as an interpreter to several clients, including Ms. Veselnitskaya and the State Department.
Mr. Samochornov was the Russian lawyer's interpreter that day. His recitation of events basically backs the versions given by the Trump associates, according to a transcript of his November 2017 committee testimony.
The meeting lasted about 20 minutes. Ms. Veselnitskaya briefly talked about possible illegal campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton . Manafort, busy on his cellphone, remarked that the contributions would not be illegal. Mr. Kushner left after a few minutes.
Then, Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist, made the case for ditching sanctions. He linked that to a move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end a ban on Americans adopting Russian children.
Mr. Trump Jr. said that issue would be addressed if his father was elected. In the end, the Trump administration put more sanctions on Moscow's political and business operators.
"I've never heard anything about the elections being mentioned at that meeting at all or in any subsequent discussions with Ms. Veselnitskaya," Mr. Samochornov testified.
No mask
One of the first things Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, did to earn the animus of Democrats and the liberal media was to visit the Trump White House to learn about "unmaskings" by Obama appointees.
The National Security Agency, by practice, obscures the names of any Americans caught up in the intercept of foreign communications. Flynn was unmasked in the top-secret transcript of his Kislyak call so officials reading it would know who was on the line.
In reading intelligence reports, if government officials want the identity of an "American person," they make a request to the intelligence community. The fear is that repeated requests could indicate political purposes.
That suspicion is how Samantha Power ended up at the House intelligence committee witness table. The former U.N. ambassador seemed to have broken records by requesting hundreds of unmaskings, though the transcript did not contain the identities of the people she exposed.
She explained to the committee why she needed to know.
"I am reading that intelligence with an eye to doing my job, right?" Ms. Power said. "Whatever my job is, whatever I am focused on on a given day, I'm taking in the intelligence to inform my judgment, to be able to advise the president on ISIL or on whatever, or to inform how I'm going to try to optimize my ability to advance U.S. interests in New York."
She continued: "I can't understand the intelligence . Can you go and ascertain who this is so I can figure out what it is I'm reading. You've made the judgement, intelligence professionals, that I need to read this piece of intelligence, I'm reading it, and it's just got this gap in it, and I didn't understand that. But I never discussed any name that I received when I did make a request and something came back or when it was annotated and came to me. I never discussed one of those names with any other individual."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, listened and then mentioned other officeholders, such as the White House national security adviser and the secretary of state.
"There are lots of people who need to understand intelligence products, but the number of requests they made, ambassador, don't approach yours," Mr. Gowdy said.
Ms. Power implied that members of her staff were requesting American identities and invoking her name without her knowledge.
The dossier
By mid- to late 2017, the full story on the Democrats' dossier -- that it was riddled with false claims of criminality that served, as Mr. Barr said, to sabotage the Trump White House -- was not known.
Mr. Steele claimed that there was a far-reaching Trump- Russia conspiracy, that Mr. Trump was a Russian spy, that Mr. Trump financed Kremlin computer hacking, that his attorney went to Prague to pay hush money to Putin operatives, and that Manafort and Carter Page worked as a conspiracy team.
Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson, a Clinton operative, spread the inaccuracies all over Washington: to the FBI , the Justice Department , Congress and the news media.
None of it proved true.
But to Clinton loyalists in 2017, the dossier was golden.
"I was mostly focused in that meeting on, you know, the guy standing behind this material is Christopher Steele ," campaign foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan said about a Fusion meeting. "He is the one who's judging its credibility and veracity. You know him. What do you think, based on your conversations with him? That's what I was really there to try and figure out. And Glenn was incredibly positive about Steele and felt he was really on to something and also felt that there was more out there to go find."
Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias vouched for the dossier, and its information spread to reporters. He met briefly with Mr. Steele during the election campaign.
"I thought that the information that he or they wished to convey was accurate and important," Mr. Elias testified.
"So the information that Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele wished to portray to the media in the fall of 2016 at that time, you thought, was accurate and important?" he was asked.
"As I understand it," he replied.
Mr. Elias rejected allegations that the Clinton campaign conspired with Russia by having its operatives spread the Moscow-sourced dirt.
"I don't have enough knowledge about when you say that Russians were involved in the dossier," he said to a questioner. "I mean that genuinely. I'm not privy to what information you all have.
"It sounds like the suggestion is that Russia somehow gave information to the Clinton campaign vis-a-vis one person to one person, to another person, to another person, to me, to the campaign. That strikes me as fanciful and unlikely, but perhaps as I said, I don't have a security clearance. You all have facts and information that is not available to me. But I certainly never had any hint or whiff."
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May 16, 2020 | www.rt.com
Originally from: Covid-19, Russiagate, Iraq – politicians are too happy to defer to convenient 'experts' -- RT Op-ed
So-called "experts" are too narrow in their focus and too often wrong in their judgments to be able to decide the sorts of life-and-death issues a nation's political leaders are asked to decide. If " War is too important to be left to the generals ," as Georges Clemenceau, (France's prime minister during World War I) claimed, then foreign policy is too important to be left to the intelligence agencies, and public policy is too important to be left to the scientists.From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, politicians and media fell over themselves in their rush to defer to the " experts. " Apparently, it was up to scientists to decide whether a country should shut down its economy and keep its citizens locked up in their homes in perpetuity. It was up to scientists to determine whether a country can, if ever, resume normal life. As for the consequences -- economic depression, exploding national debt, lost businesses and means of livelihood, growing alcoholism and drug abuse, rise in suicides, spiraling untreated medical problems -- those are things the public would just have to live with, because there could be no second-guessing of the scientists.
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May 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com
Shannon Moore , 2 days agoHe should do more than resign. He should be prosecuted for his role in an attempted coup. Schiff for prisoner 2020.
D LE , 3 days agoSchiff probably practice his lies in his mirror every morning so he can convince himself of Russian interference. Biggest liar in America Adam Schifty schiff. Needs to be arrested immediately for treason and lying under oath. But as usual nothing will happen. These people are above the law. And are untouchable. Its enough to frustrate the hell out of normal sain Americans. 4 more years of Donald Trump
TheFoolinthe rainn , 3 days agoEvery person that went on television and knowingly lied should be tried for treason , sedition and attempted over throw of Trumps presidency.
Norita Sanders , 5 days agoFolks need to take a much closer look at your own state legislature, district attorney, prosecutors, public defenders, social workers... especially your own town councils and school boards. They're stealing your lives and children at the Grassroots local level.
CAPT. RICK ALLEN , 2 days agoBill and Hillary Clinton sold the U.S. out years ago with the North American free trade agreement. And obama finished us off during g his last term.
Joe Merkel , 1 day agoThey should throw Schiff in jail and then give everything he owns to his victims who lost everything.
Tim Coleman , 3 days agoSchiff absolutely SHOULD resign but he won't. Not only will he not but he'll cheat and win re-election along with his mom, Nancy Pelosi.
Adam Schiff is not resigning. He's doubling down yet again! If you "want" him to resign, you need to understand he's staying in office until voted out. There's no willpower in the house to take action against him.
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May 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,
From the beginning of the story RussiaGate was always about Barack Obama . I didn't always see it that way, certainly. My seething hatred for all things Hillary Clinton is a powerful blind spot I admit to freely.
But, it's clear that Obama was always the vector through which the entire investigation into Donald Trump pointed. He's the only one with the power to have marshaled the forces arrayed against Trump for the past four years.
We've known this for a couple of years now but there were a seemingly endless series of distractions put in place to obfuscate the truth...
Donald Trump was not a Russian agent.
What's clear now is the President Obama's administration was regularly engaged in illegally using NSA database access to spy on Americans and political opponents . This operation pre-dates Trump by a few years.
It was de rigeur by the time the election cycle ramped up in 2016. The timing of events is during that time period paints a very damning picture. This article from Zerohedge by way of Conservative Treehouse lays out the timing, the activities and the shifts in the narrative that implicate Obama beyond any doubt.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 "about"(17) and "to/from"(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
And that's when everything changed. Because at that point, having lost access Obama's spy team needed another way into the NSA database. Enter Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele and the ridiculous dossier used to issue FISA warrants on Carter Page and all the rest of it.
The details are all there for anyone with eyes willing to see, the question is whether anyone deep in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome will take their eyes off the shadow play in front of them long enough to look.
I'm not holding my breath.
Obama is guilty of the highest crimes a President can be guilty of, utilizing Federal law enforcement and intelligence services to spy on a political opponent during an election. This is after eight years of ruinous wars, coups both successful and not, drone-striking U.S. citizens and generally carrying on like the vandal he is.
OBAMAGATE! pic.twitter.com/pFbb6hgDhF
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2020... ... ...
These people obviously missed the key point about Goebbels' Big Lie theory of propaganda. For it to work there has to be a nugget of truth to wrap the lie in before you can repeat it endlessly to make it real. And that's why RussiaGate is dead. Long live ObamaGate.
Obama's people have been covering for him for nearly four years now. They have been exposed as bald-faced liars by the transcripts of their impeachment testimonies to Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee.
None of them were willing to testify under oath, and be guilty of perjury, to the effect that Trump was colluding with the Russians. But, they'd say it on TV, Twitter and anywhere else they could to attack Trump with patent nonsense.
Now that the heat is rising and the apparatus they used to control turns its attention to what they did, enough of them will roll over and give Attorney General William Barr what he wants. Some of them will fall on their sword for Obama.
But I don't think Trump will be satisfied with that. He has to know that Obama is the key to truly draining the Swamp if that is, in fact, his goal. Because if he doesn't attack Obama now, Obama will be formidable in October. Both men are fighting for their lives at this point.
Trump was supposed to roll over and play nice. But Pat Buchanan rightly had him pegged at the beginning of this back in January of 2017, saying that Trump wasn't like Nixon, he wouldn't walk away to protect the office of the Presidency. He would fight to the bitter end because that's who he is.
And here we are coming into the home stretch and the bitter end is staring these people in the face. They've lost all credibility, corrupted whole swaths of the Federal government beyond recognition and activated every resource they have in the media and the chattering classes to make manifest a bald-faced lie. And it didn't work. Now the desperation sets in. The exoneration of Gen. Michael Flynn, the release of the transcripts and conflicting stories told by John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey and the rest all point to something beyond sinister.
You can smell the fear now. From Bill Kristol to John Brennan they can see the end of their project, whether it was for a New American Neocon Century or just the cynical push for a transnational oligarchy based around the European Union, their Utopian dreams have run into the immovable object of a people refusing to believe their lies anymore.
... ... ...
* * *
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May 11, 2020 | original.antiwar.com
For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn't have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.
House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protégé of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau's cyber crime investigations unit.
Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.
The following excerpts from Henry's testimony speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even cyber neophytes can understand:
Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC? when would that have been?
Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was exfiltrated (sic). There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left.
Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence that they actually were exfiltrated?
Mr. Henry: There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.
Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?
Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network.
Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you've indicated.
Mr. Henry: "We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.
In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic: "Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw."
Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike's "belief" that Russia hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: "There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure, but the – what we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what we'd seen associated with the Russian state."
Interesting admission in Crowdstrike CEO Shaun Henry's testimony. Henry is asked when "the Russians" exfiltrated the data from DNC.
Henry: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated." ?? pic.twitter.com/TyePqd6b5P
-- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 8, 2020Not Transparent
Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in the word "exfiltration."
The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or (2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.
As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not hacked – by Russia or anyone else.
Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and its cooperating foreign intelligence services.
Henry testifies that "it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually left."
This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers "set up" selected emails for transfer to an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any "exfiltration" over that network.
Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPs member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive."
The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment
There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the DNC.
But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant and demonstrably true:
(1) In introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution", the authors of the ICA made a highly germane point: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation – malicious or not – leaves a trail."
(2) "When analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' [these] are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong." [And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure, as was the case with the ICA.]
The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of Holy Writ to the misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment" (it was a rump effort prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.
Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it personally to President-elect Donald Trump.
On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks , in an apparent effort to cover his own derriere.
Obama: "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked."
So we ended up with "inconclusive conclusions" on that admittedly crucial point. What Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know -- or professed not to know -- exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack, and then a leak.
From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that "the Russians gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks " rested on thin gruel.
In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their "high-confidence" findings.
Clapper replied : "I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we're, we're pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails." Pretty sure?
Preferring CrowdStrike; 'Splaining to Congress
CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks . It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's struggle with separatists supported by Russia. A Voice of America report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.
Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee there were "multiple requests at different levels" for access to the DNC servers.
"Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw," he said. Comey described CrowdStrike as a "highly respected" cybersecurity company.
Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. "Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that's involved, so it's the best evidence," he said.
Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:
BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate – did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
COMEY: In the case of the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access.
BURR: But no content?
COMEY: Correct.
BURR: Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?
COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.
In June last year it was revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.
By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble, as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week – whether the abuses of FISA, misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.
Schiff: Every Confidence, But No Evidence
Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled.
Thursday's disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin "collusion," [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of "Russian hacking" of the DNC. [See: "The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate."]
Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally about evidence that Russia "hacked" the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta "think tank," The Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: "You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?" I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SdOy-l13FEg
Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and US Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr's dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.
Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to prevail this time?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This originally appeared at Consortium News .
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May 10, 2020 | thehill.com
investigation of Michael Flynn , the more it appears he was targeted precisely because, as the national security adviser to the incoming Trump administration, he signaled that the new administration might undo Obama administration policies -- which is kind of what the American people voted for in 2016.Some will say that Gen. Flynn was investigated for legitimate criminal or national security reasons. Yet, the FBI's ultimate interview of Flynn addressed none of the grounds that the FBI used to open the original case against him. For those of us who have run FBI investigations, that is more than odd.
Heavily redacted FBI documents that have been released indicate Flynn was one of several Trump campaign members who merited their own subfile investigation under the larger, now infamous " Crossfire Hurricane " debacle. Flynn even got his own cool codename -- "Crossfire Razor." (No, the FBI isn't usually that absurd. But absurdity colored that entire period of time.)
For the record, Flynn clearly exercised poor judgment as a result of being interviewed by the FBI. The larger question is whether the team under then-Director James Comey had a legitimate basis to conduct the interview at all.
FBI documents show that a Foreign Agent Registration Act ( FARA ) case was opened against Flynn. The stated reasons, in rank order, for initiating the investigation were that he was a member of the Trump campaign; he had "ties" to various Russian state-affiliated entities; he traveled to Russia; and he had a high-level top-secret clearance -- for which, by the way, he was polygraphed regularly to determine if he was a spy.
None of the listed reasons is unusual activity for the kind of positions he held. Overall it is pretty thin justification for investigating an American citizen. Yet, most chillingly, the Crossfire Hurricane team stated it was investigating Flynn "specifically" because he was "an adviser to then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for foreign policy issues."
Let me be clear: That is not a legitimate justification to investigate an American citizen.
There is a theme that runs through the entire Crossfire Hurricane disaster, which has been publicly articulated by Comey and his deputy director, Andrew McCabe : They saw themselves as stalwarts in the breach defending America from a presidential candidate who they believed was an agent of Russia .
... ... ...
Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions , which consults with private companies and public safety agencies on strategic mission technologies.
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May 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Prof K , May 10 2020 16:05 utc | 9
Posted by: Prof K | May 10 2020 16:05 utc | 9
Obama weighed in this week...on Flynn. Why?What is he trying to preempt?
He only steps in at critical moments to stop something, as he did before SC to block Bernie.
Now this. How does it relate to Russiagate and his potential liability?
Likklemore , May 10 2020 17:08 utc | 18
@ ProfK 9Jackrabbit , May 10 2020 17:31 utc | 19Whether or not General Flynn is loathed or liked, there is Supreme Court decisions setting precedence for dropping a case when found to be wrapped in prosecutorial misdeeds:
As for the first 'black' president out from the shadows;
Obama, the petit constitutional law scholar, signed the NDAA National Defence Authorization Act which allows imprisonment of Americans forever has no standing to claim the "rule of law is at risk" and he may want to call Eric Holder.
Certified Hypocrite.
Now why is Obama against General Flynn? Hmmm. Good question. Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security? LINK
Likklemore @ May10 17:08Likklemore , May 10 2020 18:11 utc | 22Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security?Gen. Flynn: Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support Sunni extremists (a Jihadi proxy army) against Assad . This directly contradicts the phony narrative of Obama as peace-loving black man (as certified by his Nobel Prize!).
!!
@ Jackrabbit 19Thanks for that additional link. And that's why Obama could not standby with Flynn in the NSA role. Recall Hillary's on Trump- "if he is elected we'll hang" (paraphrased)
In 2008 I posted at another blog this: "Obama is a fraud and my view does not hang on the controversial birther movement. " From whence he came? He made a speech at the Democratic National Convention; 3 years in the Senate, then runs to occupy the White House. The media puff pieces. "Hope and Change, Yes, We Can" Watch for the broken promises."
Fast Forward to 2011 he signs NDAA. "How Obama disappointed the world." Der Spiegel had such an article 9 Aug.2011. But he was re-(S)-elected.
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May 08, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
NY Times Accused Of Ripping Off Pulitzer Prize-Winning Stories From Russian Journalists For 2nd Time by Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2020 - 20:05 Authored by Ben Norton via TheGrayZone.com,
The New York Times has been accused for a second time of stealing major scoops from Russian journalists . One of those stories won the Times a Pulitzer Prize this May.
The journalists who have accused the Times of taking their work without credit also happen to be the same liberal media crusaders against Vladimir Putin that Western correspondents at the Times and other mainstream outlets have cast as persecuted heroes. The Pulitzer Prize Board is comprised of a who's who of media aristocrats and Ivy League bigwigs. Given the elite backgrounds of the judges, it is hardly a surprise that they rewarded reporting reinforcing the narrative of the new US Cold War against official enemies like Russia and China .
Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent who has since become a critic of US foreign policy, noted that the three finalists in the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting "were one story about how evil Russia is and two about how evil China is. These choices encourage reporters to write stories that reinforce rather than question Washington's foreign-policy narrative."
The finalists nominated in this category were Reuters and the New York Times for two separate sets of stories.
The US newspaper of record ended up winning the 2020 award in international reporting , for what the Pulitzer jury described as "a set of enthralling stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin's regime."
The 3 finalists in the #PulitzerPrize2020 "international reporting" category were one story about how evil #Russia is and two about how evil #China is. These choices encourage reporters to write stories that reinforce rather than question Washington's foreign-policy narative.
-- Stephen Kinzer (@stephenkinzer) May 5, 2020The Times was nominated again as a finalist for what the jury called its "gripping accounts that disclosed China's top-secret efforts to repress millions of Muslims through a system of labor camps, brutality and surveillance."
The staff of Reuters was selected as the third finalist for its reporting in support of anti-China protesters in Hong Kong . (The photography staff of Reuters ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography for the same coverage.)
Among the five members of the Pulitzer jury who selected these finalists was Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the neoliberal magazine The Atlantic and a former volunteer in the Israeli army who worked as a guard at a prison camp where Palestinians who rose up in the First Intifada were interned.
Joining Goldberg on the jury was Susan Chira, a former New York Times editor.
While this elite Pulitzer jury praised the New York Times for "at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin's regime," it is not exactly clear what that "risk" is supposed to entail – because the major US newspaper appears to have stolen at least part of its reporting from Russian journalists .
I'm proud and humbled to share a Pulitzer Prize with @ddknyt , @dionnesearcey , as well as @malachybrowne and his visual investigation wizards for our reporting on Russia's shadow wars. https://t.co/yczpVAw1QW
-- Michael Schwirtz (@mschwirtz) May 4, 2020On May 4, journalist Roman Badanin published a Facebook post accusing the Times of ripping off a story he had released months before without credit. Badanin is the founder and editor-in-chief of the liberal anti-Putin news website Proekt , known as The Project in English.
"I have no illusions about the real role of Russian journalism in the world, but I have to note: the two The New York Times's investigations, for which this honored newspaper won the Pulitzer prize yesterday, repeat the findings of The Project's articles published a few months before," Badanin wrote on Facebook.
"I would also like to note that the winners did not put a single link to the English version of our article, even when, for example, 8 months after The Project, they told about the activities of Eugene Prigozhin's emissaries in Madagascar," he added.
Badanin linked to an article he published, both in Russian and English, back in March 2019 titled " Master and Chef : How Evgeny Prigozhin led the Russian offensive in Africa." The story details how the businessman Evgenу Prigozhin, who is sanctioned by the US government, has been promoting business opportunities in Africa. The piece focuses specifically on Madagascar, where Russia also has a military agreement.
This report is eerily similar to a report published by the New York Times eight months later, in November , titled " How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit : Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader." This story, which was filed in Madagascar, does not once link to or credit Proekt's original reporting .
Another anti-Putin Russian news website, Meduza, published an article on May 7 drawing attention to these allegations, titled " 'Fuck the Pulitzer -- I just want a hyperlink' : Russian journalists say 'The New York Times' should have acknowledged their investigative work in the newspaper's award-winning reports about the Putin regime's 'predations.'"
Meduza interviewed Badanin, who said the New York Times "report about Madagascar from November 2019 repeats all the main and even secondary conclusions from our reporting about Madagascar and Africa generally between March and April last year."
While Badanin did not outright accuse the Times of plagiarism, he was frustrated that "nowhere in the story did they acknowledge that we'd already reported on this topic," and said it was either a "professional issue" or an "ethical problem."
A New York Times spokesperson denied that Proekt's reporting was used in any way. And the Times reporter who authored this report from Madagascar, Michael Schwirtz , responded dismissively to the accusations in a Twitter thread full of sarcastic quips.
Another anti-Putin Russian activist accuses the New York Times of lifting his reportingMichael Schwirtz authored another New York Times article in December that was cited by the Pulitzer jury for the 2020 prize. This piece, "How a Poisoning in Bulgaria Exposed Russian Assassins in Europe," is also suspiciously similar to reporting published before by yet another anti-Putin website, called The Insider .
The Insider is edited by the Western-backed, diehard anti-Putin activist Roman Dobrokhotov. In response to Schwirtz's Twitter thread, Dobrohotov angrily asked why The Insider's reports were not credited as well. Schwirtz denied having used information from the previous stories.
Schwirtz's Twitter thread tagged four Russian accounts: Proekt, The Insider, Dobrokhotov, and Yasha Levine, the last of whom is an occasional contributor to The Grayzone and the author of " Surveillance Valley ."
Time to learn the hard truth: The New York Times -- like the Empire it represents -- doesn't give a fuck about you. It'll take whatever it wants, give nothing in return, and suffer no consequences. And who'll believe you Russians anyway? https://t.co/V1YtZ7K6OB
-- Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) May 7, 2020Levine reflected on the scandal writing,
"Time to learn the hard truth: The New York Times -- like the Empire it represents -- doesn't give a fuck about you. It'll take whatever it wants, give nothing in return, and suffer no consequences. And who'll believe you Russians anyway?"
"The reverence with which liberal Russian journalists have treated the New York Times has always been baffling to me," Levine continued. "But that's what you get when you're a colonial subject like Russia. You fetishize the master. That reverence is starting to wear off, but it's still there."
New York Times was also accused of stealing Russian journalists' reporting back in 2017This is not even the first time that the US newspaper of record has been accused of stealing reporting from Russian journalists.
Back in 2017, the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its reports on "Vladimir Putin's efforts to project Russia's power abroad."
At the time, journalists from the anti-Putin website Meduza accused the Times of ripping off their reporting. The website Global Voices highlighted the controversy, in an article titled "Russian Journalists Say One of NYT's Pulitzer-Winning Stories Was Stolen ."
Meduza reported Daniil Turovsky accused New York Times Moscow correspondent Andrew E. Kramer of lifting his reporting. Kramer actually took the time to respond in a Facebook comment, acknowledging that his report was based on the Russian journalist's.
"Daniil, I spoke with you while preparing this article and explained that I intended to follow in the footsteps of your fine work, that I would credit Meduza, as I did, and thanked you for your help," Kramer said.
This did not satisfy Meduza, which also reminded readers in its latest 2020 article that the Times had ripped off its 2017 reporting.
The NYT times has been honored with a Pulitzer Prize for "exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin's regime" in 2019, but several top investigative journalists in Russia say the U.S. newspaper ignored their groundbreaking work in this area -- again. https://t.co/R4WZdqHDp4
-- Meduza in English (@meduza_en) May 7, 2020The Grayzone has also experienced this kind of shameless journalistic theft. In March 2019, the New York Times released a report acknowledging that the so-called "humanitarian aid" convoy that the US government tried to ram across the Venezuelan border in a February coup attempt had been set on fire not by government forces, but rather Washington-backed right-wing opposition hooligans.
At the time of this February 23 putsch attempt, the Times had initially joined US politicians like Senator Marco Rubio and the majority of the corporate media in blaming Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. But The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, who was reporting in Venezuela, published a report showing that all of the available evidence pointed to the opposition being responsible.
When the Times finally admitted this fact weeks later, it made no mention whatsoever of Blumenthal's reporting. Glenn Greenwald was the only high-profile journalist to credit Blumenthal and The Grayzone.
New York Times had ironically heroized these Russian journalists before stealing their reportingFurther compounding this staggering hypocrisy is the fact that the New York Times has in fact published numerous articles lionizing these anti-Putin Russian journalists, while simultaneously ripping off their work.
Proekt founder and editor Roman Badanin is not some kind of crypto pro-Kremlin activist – far from it. He has spent years working within mainstream outlets, and was previously the editor-in-chief of the decidedly anti-Putin Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Badanin does friendly interviews with US-based neoconservative think tanks like the Free Russia Foundation , a right-wing anti-Putin lobbying group that appointed regime-changer Michael Weiss as its director for special investigations.
In an interview conducted by Valeria Jegisman , a neoconservative anti-Russian activist who worked as a spokesperson for the government of Estonia and now works at the US government's propaganda arm Voice of America, group accused the Kremlin of spreading false information, claiming "Russia will continue its disinformation tactics."
Badanin also called for "the West" to "support independent media projects with non-profit funding," stating clearly: "I think that what the West can do is to continue to support independent media in the most transparent and clear way, and to stop being afraid of the million tricks that the Russian authorities come up with to force the West to abandon these investments."
The Russian journalist's pro-Western perspective has been rewarded. Badanin was honored by the European Press Prize , a program backed by Western governments and the top corporate media outlets in Europe, particularly The Guardian and Reuters.
Badanin was also given a Stanford John S. Knight international fellowship in journalism. Stanford University has established itself as an outpost for Russian pro-Western liberals, and its journalist fellowship program provides institutional support for dissidents in countries targeted by Washington for regime change.
Badanin's extensive links to Western regime-change institutions should not come as a surprise to the New York Times; it has in fact honored him in numerous articles.
In 2017, the Times published an entire article framed around Badanin. Reporter Jim Rutenberg explained, "I wanted to better understand President Trump's America So I went to Russia ."
In Moscow, Rutenberg met with Badanin at the headquarters of the anti-Putin station TV Rain, which he described as a "warehouse complex here, populated by young people with beards, tattoos, piercings and colored hair. (Brooklyn hipster imperialism knows no bounds.)"
While praising Badanin and TV Rain, the Times also noted that the channel published a poll suggesting that the Soviet Union "should have abandoned Leningrad to the Nazis to save lives."
The Times even featured Badanin prominently in the header image of the story -- just two years before the same newspaper would go on to rip off his reporting.
The New York Times also reported on Roman Badanin in 2016 and 2011 . It is abundantly clear the newspaper knew who he was.
The Gray Lady's willingness to snatch Badanin's reporting shows how little respect newspapers like the New York Times actually have for the anti-Putin journalists they claim to lionize . For the jet-setting correspondents of Western corporate media outlets, liberal Russian reporters are just tools to advance their own ambitions.
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Dec 13, 2017 | thenation.com
Cohen offers the following general observations, which form the basis of the discussion:
The foundational accusation of Russiagate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of DNC e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this "attack on American democracy." As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russiagate without Russia. (An apt formulation perhaps first coined in an e-mail exchange by Nation writer James Carden.) Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's short-lived national-security adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and inconsequential Trump "adviser," for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with improper collusion with Russia, except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn. Instead, the several investigations, desperate to find actual evidence of collusion, have spread to "contacts with Russia"-political, financial, social, etc.-on the part of a growing number of people, often going back many years before anyone imagined Trump as a presidential candidate. The resulting implication is that these "contacts" were criminal or potentially so.
This is unprecedented, preposterous, and dangerous, potentially more so than even McCarthy's search for "Communist" connections. It would suggest, for example, that scores of American corporations doing business in Russia today are engaged in criminal enterprise. More to the point, advisers to US policy-makers and even media commentators on Russia must have many and various contacts with Russia if they are to understand anything about the dynamics of Kremlin policy-making. Cohen himself, to take an individual example, was an adviser to two (unsuccessful) presidential campaigns, which considered his wide-ranging and longstanding "contacts" with Russia to be an important credential, as did the one sitting president he advised. To suggest that such contacts are in any way criminal is to slur hundreds of reputations and to leave US policy-makers with advisers laden with ideology and no actual expertise. It is also to suggest that any quest for better relations with Russia, or détente, is somehow suspicious, illegitimate, or impossible, as expressed recently by Andrew Weiss in The Wall Street Journal and by The Washington Post, in an editorial. This is one reason Cohen, in a previous Batchelor broadcast and commentary, argued that Russiagate and its promoters have become the gravest threat to American national security.
Russiagate began sometime prior to June 2016, not after the presidential election in November, as is often said, as an anti-Trump political project. (Exactly why, how, and by whom remain unclear, and herein lies the real significance of the largely bogus "Dossier" and the still murky role of top US intel officials in the creation of that document.) That said, Cohen continues, the mainstream American media have been largely responsible for inflating, perpetuating, and sustaining the sham Russiagate as the real political crisis it has become, arguably the greatest in modern American presidential and thus institutional political history. The media have done this by increasingly betraying their own professed standards of verified news reporting and balanced coverage, even resorting to tacit forms of censorship by systematically excluding dissenting reporting and opinions. (For inventories of recent examples, see Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept and Joe Lauria at Consortium News. Anyone interested in exposures of such truly "fake news" should visit these two sites regularly, the latter the product of the inestimable veteran journalist Robert Parry.) Still worse, this mainstream malpractice has spread to some alternative-media publications once prized for their journalistic standards, where expressed disdain for "evidence" and "proof" in favor of allegations without any actual facts can sometimes be found. Nor are these practices merely the ordinary occasional mishaps of professional journalism. As Greenwald points out, all of the now retracted stories, whether by print media or cable television, were zealous promotions of Russiagate and virulently anti-Trump. They, too, are examples of Russiagate without Russia.
Leaving aside possible financial improprieties on the part of General Flynn, his persecution and subsequent prosecution is highly indicative. Flynn pled guilty to having lied to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, on behalf of the incoming Trump administration, discussions that unavoidably included some references, however vague, to sanctions imposed on Russia by President Obama in December 2016, just before leaving office.
Those sanctions were highly unusual-last-minute, unprecedented in their seizure of Russian property in the United States, and including a reckless veiled threat of unspecified cyber attacks on Russia. They gave the impression that Obama wanted to make even more difficult Trump's professed goal of improving relations with Moscow.
Still more, Obama's specified reason was not Russian behavior in Ukraine or Syria, as is commonly thought, but Russiagate-that is, Putin's "attack on American democracy," which Obama's intel chiefs had evidently persuaded him was an entirely authentic allegation. (Or which Obama, who regarded Trump's victory over his designated successor, Hillary Clinton, as a personal rebuff, was eager to believe.) But Flynn's discussions with the Russian ambassador-as well as other Trump representatives' efforts to open "back-channel" communications with Moscow–were anything but a crime. As Cohen pointed out in another previous commentary, there were so many precedents of such overtures on behalf of presidents-elect, it was considered a normal, even necessary practice, if only to ask Moscow not to make relations worse before the new president had a chance to review the relationship. When Henry Kissinger did this on behalf of President-elect Nixon, his boss instructed him to keep the communication entirely confidential, not to inform any other members of the incoming administration. Presumably Flynn was similarly secretive, thereby misinforming Vice President Pence and finding himself trapped-or possibly entrapped-between loyalty to his president and an FBI agent. Flynn no doubt would have been especially guarded with a representative of the FBI, knowing as he did the role of Obama's Intel bosses in Russiagate prior to the election and which had escalated after Trump's surprise victory. In any event, to the extent that Flynn encouraged Moscow not to reply in kind immediately to Obama's highly provocative sanctions, he performed a service to US national security, not a crime. And, assuming that Flynn was acting on the instructions of his president-elect, so did Trump. Still more, if Flynn "colluded" in any way, it was with Israel, not Russia, having been asked by that government to dissuade countries from voting for an impending anti-Israel UN resolution.
Finally, and similarly, Cohen points out, there is the ongoing effort by the political-media establishment to drive Secretary of State Tillerson from office and replace him with a fully neocon, anti-Russian, anti-détente head of the State Department. Tillerson was an admirable appointee by Trump-widely experienced in world affairs, a tested negotiator, a mature and practical-minded man. Originally, his role as the CEO of Exxon Mobil who had negotiated and enacted an immensely profitable and strategically important energy-extraction deal with the Kremlin earned him the slur of being "Putin's pal." This preposterous allegation has since given way to charges that he is slowly restructuring, and trimming, the long bloated and mostly inept State Department, as indeed he should do. Numerous former diplomats closely associated with Hillary Clinton have raced to influential op-ed pages to denounce Tillerson's undermining of this purportedly glorious frontline institution of American national security. Many news reports, commentaries, and editorials have been in the same vein. But who can recall, Cohen asks, a major diplomatic triumph by the State Department or a secretary of state in recent years? The answer might be the Obama administration's multinational agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear-weapons potential, but that was due no less to Russia's president and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which provided essential guarantees to the sides involved. Forgotten, meanwhile, are the more than 50 career State Department officials who publicly protested-in the spirit of DOD-Obama's rare attempt to cooperate with Moscow in Syria. Call it by what it was: the sabotaging of a president by his own State Department. In this spirit, there are a flurry of leaked stories that Tillerson will soon resign or be ousted. Meanwhile, however, he carries on. The ever-looming menace of Russiagate compels him to issue wildly exaggerated indictments of Russian behavior while, at the same time, calling for a "productive new relationship" with Moscow, in which he clearly believes. (And which, if left unencumbered, he might achieve.) Evidently, he has established a "productive" working relationship with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, the two of them having just announced North Korea's readiness to engage in negotiations with the United States and other governments involved in the current crisis.
Tillerson's fate, Cohen concludes, will tell us much about the number-one foreign-policy question confronting America: cooperation or escalating conflict with the other nuclear superpower, a détente-like diminishing of the new Cold War or the growing risks that it will become hot war. Politics and policy should never be over-personalized; larger factors are always involved. But in these unprecedented times, Tillerson may be the last man standing who represents the possibility of some kind of détente. Apart, that is, from President Trump himself, loathe him or not. Or to put the issue differently: Will Russiagate continue to gravely endanger American national security?
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their seventh year, are available at www.thenation.com.
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May 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
begob , May 5 2020 2:08 utc | 114
In the UK, looks like Tom Tugendhat, chair of the foreign affairs committee, is spreading the China-did-it propaganda, after his comments on the BBC last week. He can file it alongside his promotion of the White Helmets and the Skripal affair.
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Apr 17, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
AMERICA-HYSTERICA. US Attorney General Barr just said the Russia collusion probe was a travesty, had no basis and was intended to sabotage Trump . All true of course. May we take this as a sign that at last (at last!) Durham is ready to go with indictments? Or will it prove to be another false alarm? There's certainly a lot to reveal: A recent investigation showed that every FISA application (warrant to spy on US citizens) examined had egregious deficiencies. It's not just Trump.
MEANINGLESSNESS. Remember the Steele dossier? Now it's being spun as Russian disinformation . So we're now supposed to believe that Putin smeared Trump because he really wanted Clinton to win? Gosh, that Putin guy is so clever that it's impossible to figure out what he's doing!
COVID BLAME I. Back in the day I read a certain amount of Soviet propaganda about the wicked West. And, while it was quite often over the top, pretty monotonous and probably – judging from what ex-Soviets have told me – not all that effective in the long run, it usually had, buried deep inside, a tiny kernel of reality. Western anti-Russia propaganda, on the other hand, is nothing but free-association nonsense. Take the NYT's latest: the headline alone tells you it's crap: " Putin's Long War Against American Science: A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses ." Another difference was that Soviet propaganda at least ran on the assumption that the Soviet system was preferable: this, on the other hand, is a pitiful attempt to blame the US COVID failure on somebody else. Nonetheless, this is not rock-bottom for the NYT's anti-Russian fantasies: that target was hit a couple of years ago with " Trump and Putin: A Love Story ". (But, the goalposts keep moving: if you accuse a Dem of Trumpish grabbing, you're probably a Putinbot .) I guess it will only get more: " The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters ."
COVID BLAME II. Maybe it's not Putin or Xi who's to blame: maybe it's your own propaganda outlet: " VOA too often speaks for America's adversaries -- not its citizens... VOA has instead amplified Beijing's propaganda. "
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Apr 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
William Gruff , Apr 15 2020 11:38 utc | 168The year that Rutherford died (1938 [sic]) there disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether Rutherford would continue to joke and laugh as he used to.
"These media and these experts, both enamored of objectivity and impartiality, have they a conscience ? Do they have ethics ?" --Chinese Ambassador quoted and translated by Peter AU1 @152The Mockingbird mass media tools have something far more important: Duty to an empire that is staggering from crises. The pandemic isn't even the greatest of the crises that is bedeviling the empire. Even the financial meltdown is just one of the biggies. A particularly insidious crisis growing in the West is the Mockingbird mass media losing control of the narratives needed to maintain empire. This leaves the media tools desperate, almost frantic, in their narrative spinning.
By the way, everyone knows that Stephen Hawking was a guest at Epstein's Island, right? In fact, a large number of notable scientists had been guests there. Now why would the CIA want blackmail material on top scientists and "experts" ? Well, I guess that even though scientists will naturally feel obligation to their benefactors' empire, their tendency to prioritize truth might at times be inconvenient.
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Apr 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
PJB , Apr 14 2020 12:02 utc | 91
@Wlliam GruffWhether social democrat or socialist - I agree Sanders did progress the cause for needed societal, financial and political change.
But why did he fold so weakly and meekly in both 2016 and again now?
Especially in the face of obvious vote rigging by the Hillary campaign (as proven in a Florida civil court ruling - albeit with the judge's decision accepting the DNC Defense argument that the DNC has the right to appoint their candidate and override the primaries - sudden untimely death of two of the lawyers for the Bernie Sanders supporters who brought the case as well).
This time the totally unexpected victory on "Super Thursday" as Sleepy Joe called it in 9 state primaries stinks to high heaven. Maybe he did win given the media support and enough ignoramuses voted for a man who is blatantly suffering dementia as well as having been a corrupt nepotist of the highest order and an alleged rapist and video documented serial creepy fondler of women and young children.
Something is seriously sick about the DNC and it's collusion with the media. The pretence of democracy is crashing and the oligarchy exposed.
Trump will win - because many will hope he is a renegade oligarch who has some moral compass even if a broken one.
William Gruff , Apr 14 2020 12:32 utc | 93
PJB @89A social democrat will refuse to demand that General Motors make concessions to the workers unless General Motors is making solid profits. Extend the concept to the entire economy. Capitalism is in crisis. For a social democrat that means heavy demands are off the table until the crisis is resolved and capitalism returns to profitability. How could Sanders deliver on his promises even if he won? Better to just throw in the towel, at least from a social democrat perspective.
"Something is seriously sick about the DNC and it's collusion with the media."
Indeed, but there is more to it. The mass media isn't so much colluding with the Dems as the media has been largely taken over by a criminal gang ( Operation Mockingbird ), and the same gang has taken over the Democrat party. Instructions to both the mass media and the Dems are coming from the same folks, so it looks like collusion, but actual direct connections between the two will not be so conspicuous.
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Apr 02, 2020 | hub.jhu.edu
PBO kenformerlyfromRI • 8 days ago ,
There is no conspiracy, they didn't make up false documents to start a Russian investigation, oh wait they did.. I just read that Bloomberg spent north of $500,000,000.00 to become president and you want me to believe the Russians spent 1% of that and got better results.. You have to be a special kind of stupid.
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Apr 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
bevin , Apr 1 2020 20:48 utc | 38
US Politicians never forget that for the past seventy years russophobia and sinophobic racism- both of which have deep roots in the culture- formed the bases of the ideology of anti-communism.The Democrats, totally discredited by the 2016 Election campaign and decades of Clinton/Obama swings towards the right and away from the old New Deal constituencies, began by accusing Trump of colluding with the Russians- who most of the DNC deliberately suggested, and probably genuinely thought, were Communists.
Trump's response is now to revive the anti-Peoples Republic witch-hunts of the past to use against the Democrats.
We have two discredited old parties, incapable of dealing with the crises facing them, attempting to revive the only ideas that have ever galvanised the US public in their lifetimes: opposition to communism and the racism which underlay just about every US military adventure since 1945 - the all purpose anti-gook racism that saw them through the wars against Japan, Korea, IndoChina and the People's Republic.
It is going to make the spectacle of two monkeys throwing shit at each other seem positively restrained - the Democrats howling about Russia and the Republicans, reverting to type, starting up lynch mobs against China.
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Mar 28, 2020 | www.unz.com
U.S. intelligence community, through its preferred propaganda sheet the New York Times, is now reporting that Russia is taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to spread disinformation through Europe and also in the U.S.
In particular, Putin has escalated a campaign-by-innuendo to reduce confidence in the outcome of the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
In any event, the Russians are too late as the Democratic and Republican parties' behavior has already convinced many Americans that voting in November will be a waste of time.
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Mar 26, 2020 | russia-insider.com
As RT UK launches, attacks on the channel in the British media have stepped up
The latest is a piece by Mr. Cyril Waugh-Monger, a very important newspaper columnist for the NeoCon Daily, a patron of the Senator Joe McCarthy Appreciation Society and author of 'Why the Iraq War was a Brilliant Idea' and 'The Humanitarian Case for Bombing Syria.'
Dear socially inferior person reading this article. My name is Cyril Waugh-Monger (I'm called 'Mr Terribly Pompous Neo-Con' by my friends) and I'm here to tell you why on no account should you watch RT and why you should be making complaints to Ofcom (a British bureacracy which regulates TV) about this dreadful channel so that in the interests of 'free speech' and 'democracy' we can get it off air.
1. RT doesn't peddle RussophobiaOutrageously, RT doesn't compare Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. It doesn't join in with the demonization of Russia and its leader. How can we have a channel which is watched by people in Britain, which doesn't do that? We neocons say that demonization of Russia and its leader is compulsory. How dare RT not do as we say!
RT is more vocally in support of Russia than western media 2. RT is sometimes rude to bankersThere's a man on RT called Max Keiser and he is often very rude to bankers. Why, he has even called for them to face the death penalty. Such disrespect to our financial elites is shocking and should not be allowed in a free society.
3. Its coverage of the MH17 crashShockingly, RT commentators didn't rush to blame Vladimir Putin for the air disaster within seconds of the news breaking. Some even said that we should wait for the forensic evidence before any statements apportioning guilt were made. Others said that we couldn't rule out that the plane was downed by an another aircraft. This failure to come and say loud and clear "Putin personally shot down the plane with a missile he made and fired with his own hands" within minutes of the crash is clear evidence of RT's bias and why it must be taken off the air.
4. RT's 'pundits' include people who aren't neocons and 'liberal interventionists'This is truly scandalous: RT gives airtime to people who don't support the West's policy of endless war and who opposed airstrikes on Syria last year. Why, it's even broadcast interviews with the convener of the Stop the War coalition – and has a regular weekly show fronted by George Galloway! This is unconscionable. Only people who support Western foreign policy should be allowed to express their views on international affairs on television, not 'cranks' and 'fanatics' who oppose attacking a sovereign state in the Middle East on deceitful grounds every couple of years. Why, if RT had been around in 2003, it would no doubt have given airtime to anti-war 'conspiracy theorists' who would have told viewers that Iraq had no WMDs – and claimed, fantastically – that Bush and Blair were making it all up.
5. RT provides airtime to genuine socialists and genuine conservativesThis is really terrible: RT interviews people who oppose neo-liberalism and globalization, from both the left and the right. It's given the microphone to socialists, communists, greens, and 'extremists' on the right, like Ron Paul. These people should not be allowed to express their views on television; they are 'cranks' and should be totally marginalized. Only those who support the hegemonic consensus should be allowed on TV. It's very important that in order to protect free speech and democracy, alternative opinions are not heard.
6. RT pundits have 'extremist' linksI monitor the people who appear on RT very, very closely and I can tell you that there was once a case of an RT interviewee who had a link on his website to another website which had a link to another website which had a link to another website – which denied the Holocaust and said that little green men from Mars were ruling the US.
After considerable research, I also found that another RT pundit once attended a conference where a fellow invitee had once sat at a restaurant table, a few days after another person who had actually praised Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Josef Stalin in a magazine article published in North Korea in 1962.
7. RT is anti-semiticOk, I've got no evidence of this, but I'll bung it in anyway as it sounds good.
8. RT has broadcast documentaries on the wars in Yugoslavia which don't blame the Serbs for everythingThis is totally unacceptable.
9. RT has had 'experts' on its programs who have made some very strong criticisms of IsraelThis too is totally unacceptable. Anyone with a theory or definition that differs from Western minded politicians is demonized for voicing their opinion.
10. RT pundits have often ridiculed leading American policymakersFor instance, when the US Secretary of State John Kerry said that "you just don't in the 21st century" invade another country on "completely trumped up pretext," some people on RT had the audacity to say "What about Iraq?" This lack of respect towards a leading American politician is appalling, and in a free society ought not to be allowed. The correct procedure whenever a leading US political figure speaks is to tug one's forelock.
11. RT's coverage of the conflict in SyriaIn 2011-13, we had so-called 'experts' on Syria telling us on RT that some of the freedom-fighting pro-democracy rebels were actually fanatical terrorists who were guilty of committing atrocities. This was obviously a clear lie. Islamist terrorists like ISIS have only been active in Syria since 2014 and of course, it's all the fault of President Assad and Russia.
12. RT interviews lots of people whose views I do not shareIt ought not to be allowed! Aren't we supposed to live in a democracy?
13. The most important reason: RT is a threatMore and more people are watching it – which is why me and my little group of neocons and 'liberal interventionists' are so worried and stepping up our attacks on the station and denigrating those people who appear on it.
The next big war is going to be much harder for us to 'sell' to the plebs, because we are no longer in control of the narrative as we were in 2003, before the Iraq war. Oh, what happy days those were!
Don't watch RT because we really don't want you to 'question more.' We want you to question less. It's much easier for us that way.
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Mar 26, 2020 | www.unz.com
Stephen Paul Foster , says: Website Show Comment March 25, 2020 at 11:17 am GMT
@niteranger "For example, New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof on Sunday reported the disheartening analysis of Dr. Neil Ferguson of Britain, one of the world's leading epidemiologists."Nicholas Kristoff has the bad habit of falling for falling for frauds and making them famous. "Three cups of tea" for starters. He's got a long track record of peddling fake stuff.
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Mar 24, 2020 | www.unz.com
Dacian Julien Soros , says: Show Comment March 22, 2020 at 2:54 pm GMT
This weaponizing of random indignation is a classic tool of the Western propaganda. In Romania, we heard for a decade how the national-populists masquerading as socialists are to blame for the lack of highways. It's been a few years since idiot Romanians gather in random cities to complain that their city is not yet hooked to the Austro-Hungarian highway system, despite the lack of traffic between their city and Austro-Hungary.It is my understanding that, once highway construction will start, there will be protests about natural or archeological treasures presumably endangered by the construction. It has been decently working in Russia, with that Khimki forest.
Anything that can be thrown at a government threatening to leave the NWO will be used. It's even worse for governments that are already one foot out, like Russia / China, or completely out, like Iran / North Korea. Putin will be blamed for epidemics, earthquakes, tsunamis, and even eclipses. If an earthquake would kill only a few, we will hear about "failure to respond". If the earthquake doesn't kill anybody. we will be told that Putin exploited it for propaganda.
One of the ways that CIA and Soros use, in order to weaponize Romania's presumed lack of highways, is to pay some useful idiots, who call themselves "The Association for the Betterment of Highways", "The Pro-Infrastructura Brigade", and so on. Most of these NGOs consist of a single person, who posts videos of them ranting next to a construction site. Using the model that BoJo used for the upcoming marriage (three men and one dog), the more Soros/CIA-resistant types call them "The One-Incel-And-His-Drone Association".
By that same standard, I suspect we call this Doctors' Alliance "Vasilievna-and-her-thermometer Association". Whatever she says about Moscow hospitals is probably informed by her thermometer anyway. I doubt you can tell how things are in a 10-million city, especially if you are a marginal clown.
Is she an ophthalmologist, like The Part-Time Virologist Martyr of Wuhan? Dentist, perhaps?
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Mar 22, 2020 | https://www.moonofalabama.org
Dick | Mar 22 2020 0:48 utc | 66
When reading any article concerning current events (ie. Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, or Coronavirus) consider how the The Seven Principles of Propaganda may apply. (repost):
- Avoid abstract ideas - appeal to the emotions. When we think emotionally, we are more prone to be irrational and less critical in our thinking. I can remember several instances where this has been employed by the US to prepare the public with a justification of their actions. Here are four examples:
The Invasion of Grenada during the Reagan administration was said to be necessary to rescue American students being held hostage by Grenadian coup authorities after a coup that overthrew the government. I had a friend in the 82nd airborne division that participated in the rescue. He told me the students said they were hiding in the school to avoid the fighting by the US military, and had never been threatened by any Grenadian authority and were only hiding in the school to avoid all the fighting. Film of the actual rescue broadcast on the mainstream media was taken out of context; the students were never in danger.
The invasion of Panama in the late 80's was supposedly to capture the dictator Manual Noriega for international crimes related to drugs and weapons. I remember a headline covered by all the media where a Navy lieutenant and his wife were detained by the police. His wife was sexually assaulted while in custody, according to the story. Unfortunately, it never happened. It was intended to get the public emotionally involved to support the action.
The invasion of Iraq in the early 90's was preceded by a speech by a girl describing the Iraqi army throwing babies out of incubators so the equipment could be transferred to Iraq. It turns out the girl was the daughter of one of the Kuwait's ruling sheiks and the event never occurred. However, it served its purpose by getting the American public involved emotionally supporting the war.
During the build up to the bombing campaign by NATO against Libya, a woman entered a hotel where reporters were staying claiming she was raped by several police officers of the Gaddafi security services. The report was carried by most media outlets as representative of the brutality of the Gaddafi regime. I was not able to verify if this story was true or not, but it fits the usual method employed to gain public support through propaganda for military interventions.
The greatest emotion in us is fear and fear is used extensively to make us think irrationally. I remember growing up during the cold war having the fear of nuclear war or 'The Russians are coming!' After the cold war without an obvious enemy, it was Al Qaeda even before 911, so we had 'Al Qaeda is coming!' Now we have 'ISIS is coming!' with media blasting us with terrorist fears. Whenever I hear a government promoting an emotional issue or fear mongering, I ignore them knowing there is a hidden Truth behind the issue.
- Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases. This could be stated more plainly as 'Keep it simple, stupid!' The most notorious use of this technique recently was the Bush administration. Everyone can remember 'We must fight them over there rather than over here' or my favourite 'They hate us for our freedoms'. Neither of these phrases made any rational sense despite 911. The last thing Muslims in the Middle East care about is American's freedoms, maybe it was all the bombs the US was dropping on them.
- Give only one side of the argument and obscure history. Watching mainstream media in the US, you can see all the news is biased to the American view as an example. This is prevalent within Australian commercial media and newspapers giving only a western view, but fortunately, we have the SBS and the ABC that are very good, certainly not perfect, at providing both sides of a story. In addition, any historical perspective is ignored keeping the citizenry focused on the here and now. Can any of you remember any news organisation giving an in depth history of Ukraine or Palestine? I cannot.
- Demonize the enemy or pick out one special "enemy" for special vilification. This is obvious in politics where politicians continuously criticise their opponents. Of course, demonization is more productively applied to international figures or nations such as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, the Taliban and just recently Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. It establishes a negative emotional view of either a nation (i.e. Iran) or a known figure (i.e. Putin) making us again think emotionally, rather than rationally, making it easier to promote evil acts upon a nation or a known figure. Certainly some of these groups or individuals were less than benign, but not necessarily demons as depicted in the west.
- Appear humanitarian in work and motivations. The US has used this technique often to validate foreign interventions or ongoing conflicts where the term 'Right to Protect' is used for justification. Everyone should remember the many stories about the abuse of women in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein's supposed brutality toward his people. The recent attack on Syria by the US, UK, and France was depicted as an Humanitarian intervention by the UK Government, which was far from the truth. One thing that always amazes me is when the US sends humanitarian aid to a country it is accompanied by the US military. In Haiti some years back, the US sent troops with no other country doing so. The recent Ebola outbreak in Africa saw US troops sent to the area. How are troops going to fight a medical outbreak? No doubt, they are there for other reasons.
- Obscure one's economic interests. Who believes the invasion of Iraq was for weapons of mass destruction? Or the constant threats against Iran are for their nuclear program? Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no one has presented firm evidence Iran intends to produce nuclear weapons. The West has been interfering in the Middle East since the British in the late 19th century. It is all about oil and the control over the resources. In fact, if one researches the cause of wars over the last hundred years, you will always find economics was a major component driving the rush to war for most of them.
- Monopolize the flow of information. This is the most important principle and mainly entails setting the narrative by which all subsequent events can be based upon or interpreted in such a way as to reinforce the narrative. The narrative does not need to be true; in fact, it can be anything that suits the monopoliser as long as it is based loosely on some event. It is critical to have at least majority control of media and the ability to control the message so the flow of information is consistent with the narrative. This has been played out on mainstream media concerning the Ukrainian conflict, Syrian conflict, and the Skirpal affair. Just over the last couple of years, we have all been subjected to propaganda in one form or another. Remember the US wanting to bomb Syria because of the sarin gas attack, it was later determined to be false (see Seymour Hersh 'Whose Sarin'). The shoot down of MH17 was immediately blamed on Russia by the west without any convincing proof (setting the narrative). It amazes me just how fast the story died after the initial saturation in the media. When I awoke that morning in July, I heard on the news PM Tony Abbot blaming Russia for the incident only hours afterward. How could he know Russia shot down the plane? The investigation into the incident had not even begun, so I suspect he was singing from the West's hymnbook in a standard setting the narrative scenario.
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Mar 17, 2020 | www.rt.com
The US is dropping the much-hyped indictment for 'election meddling' against a company supposedly behind the so-called Russian troll farm, closing the opening chapter of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russiagate investigation. Further pursuing the case against Concord Management & Consulting LLC, "promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation's security," the Department of Justice wrote to the federal judge overseeing the case on Monday, in a motion to drop the charges.
DOJ lawyers cited "recent events and a change in the balance of the government's proof due to a classification determination, " saying only that they submitted further details in a classified addendum.
Wow.The DOJ moves to dismiss the charges against the Russian Company (Concord) who conducted the alleged "information warfare against the US"The troll case will be dismissed w/ prejudice.How embarrassing for Team Mueller. pic.twitter.com/wfZ78EWgKc
-- Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) March 16, 2020Concord was one of the three companies – the Internet Research Agency is another – and 13 individuals charged in February 2018 with waging "information warfare against the United States of America " using social media.
Also on rt.com US indicts 13 Russians for 2016 election meddling, but 'no allegations' they influenced outcomeThe DOJ rationalizes the motion to dismiss by arguing that Concord is "a Russian company with no presence in the United States and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction." That has always been the case, however. What really changed since the indictment was filed is the complete implosion of Mueller's case, helped in part by Concord fighting the case in court.
The motion inadvertently reveals that Mueller's prosecutors never intended the case against Concord, two other entities and 13 individuals to actually go to trial, otherwise they would have anticipated what ended up happening: Concord's lawyers demanding discovery documents from the DOJ, which the US authorities say risks "exposure of law enforcement's tools and techniques."
But the Russians *did* show up, got to claim they were innocent until proven guilty, availed themselves of discovery, tied up the court in time, cost hundreds of thousands of $ in legal bills for DOJ, and gave Mueller a few black eyes in the process, and ended up victorious
-- Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) March 17, 2020Mueller's team tried to fight the discovery proceedings by arguing in January 2019 that Concord was leaking them to "discredit " the investigation. Within two months, however, the investigation discredited itself, by having to admit there was no "collusion " between US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
Also on rt.com Another nail in Russiagate coffin? Federal judge destroys key Mueller report claimThey still insisted that Russia had "meddled " in the election, but there too the case proved a problem. Concord successfully petitioned Judge Dabney L. Friedrich in May last year to rebuke the prosecutors for presenting their allegations as facts.
This is not to say that the DOJ is ready to disavow 'Russiagate' as a debunked conspiracy theory, however. Though the Concord case was dropped, the charges against the Internet Research Agency and the 13 Russian individuals were not. Given that none of them have a presence in the US, and have not dignified the indictment with a response, it is unclear how – if at all – the DOJ intends to proceed with the case.
Keeping it on the books may keep the flames of 'Russiagate' alive, though, which is very convenient for the media and others heavily invested in the narrative of Moscow somehow menacing US elections, despite not a shred of actual evidence being presented to back it up.
For a snapshot in time, this was the NYT homepage after the Russian troll farm indictment back in February 2018. Russia, we were told, "is engaged in a virtual war against the United States." pic.twitter.com/Z0xXCZoT9P
-- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 16, 2020Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
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Feb 24, 2020 | original.antiwar.com
Another presidential election year is upon us, and the intelligence agencies are hard at work stoking fears of Russian meddling. This time it looks like the Russians do not only like the incumbent president but also favor who appears to be the Democratic front-runner, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.On Thursday, The New York Times ran a story titled , "Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump." The story says that on February 13 th US lawmakers from the House were briefed by intelligence officials who warned them, "Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected."
The story provides little detail into the briefing and gives no evidence to back up the intelligence officials' claims. It mostly rehashes old claims from the 2016 election, such as Russians are trying to "stir controversy" and "stoke division." The intelligence officials also said the Russians are looking to interfere with the 2020 Democratic primaries.
It looks like other intelligence officials are already undermining the leaked briefing. CNN ran a story on Sunday titled "US intelligence briefer appears to have overstated assessment of 2020 Russian interference." The CNN article reads, "The US intelligence community has assessed that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election and has separately assessed that Russia views Trump as a leader they can work with. But the US does not have evidence that Russia's interference this cycle is aimed at re-electing Trump, the officials said."
According to The Times, President Trump was upset with acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire for letting the briefing happen, and Republican lawmakers did not agree with the conclusion since Trump has been "tough" on Russia. In his three years in office, Trump certainly has been tough on Russia, and it is hard to believe that Putin would work to reelect such a Russia hawk.
Under Trump, NATO has strengthened and held its largest war games since the cold war. The Trump administration withdrew from the Reagan-era nuclear arms treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), an arms control agreement that prohibited Russia and the US from developing medium-range nuclear and ballistic missiles. Shortly after tearing up the treaty, the Pentagon began developing and testing missiles that were banned under the INF.
The Trump Administration might let another nuclear arms treaty lapse. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) limits the number of nuclear warheads that Russia and the US can have deployed. The US does not want to re-sign the treaty and is using the excuse that it wants to include China in the deal. China's nuclear arsenal is estimated to be around 300 warheads , which is just one-fifth of the amount that Russia and the US are allowed to have deployed under the New START. It makes no sense for China to limit its deployment of nuclear warheads when its arsenal is nothing compared to the other two superpowers. China appears to be a scapegoat for the US to blame if the treaty does not get renewed. Without the New START, there will be nothing limiting the number of nukes the US and Russia can deploy, making the world a much more dangerous place.
Despite all the drama over military aid to Ukraine, Trump never actually delayed it, and the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes $300 million in lethal aid to Ukraine , $50 million more than the previous year. The NDAA also calls for mandatory sanctions against any companies working on completing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a natural gas pipeline that connects Russia and Germany. Of all Trump's hawkish policies, his effort to kill the Nord Stream 2 and the pressure he puts on Germany not to buy gas from Russia can do the most damage to Russia's economy.
The policies listed above are just a few examples of Trump's hostility towards Russia. Others include attempting to overthrow Russia's ally in Venezuela, maintaining a troop presence in Syria to "secure the oil," sanctioning Russian officials and businessman, and much more .
Despite all these provocations towards Russia, Trump is still accused of being a "puppet" of Vladimir Putin. No matter how much the president moves the US closer to direct confrontation with Russia, the talking heads and pundits of the mainstream media take superficial examples – like the 2018 Helsinki conference – as proof of Trump's loyalty to Putin. Trump's words are put under a microscope, while his policies that make nuclear war more possible are largely ignored.
The leaked briefing harkens back to an intelligence assessment that came out in January 2017 during the last days of the Obama administration. The assessment concluded that Vladimir Putin himself ordered the election interference to help Trump get elected. At first, a falsehood spread through the media that all 17 US intelligence agencies agreed with the conclusion. But later testimony from Obama-era intelligence officials revealed the assessment was prepared by hand-picked analysts from the CIA, FBI, and NSA. The assessment offered no evidence for the claim and mostly focused on media coverage of the presidential candidates on Russian state-funded media.
On Friday, The Washington Post piled on to the Russia hysteria and ran a story titled "Bernie Sanders briefed by US officials that Russia is trying to help his campaign." The story says Sanders received a briefing on Russian efforts to boost his campaign. The details are again scant and The Post admits that "It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken."
The few progressive journalists that have been right on Russiagate all along had the foresight to see how accusations of Russian meddling would ultimately be used to hurt Sanders' campaign. Unfortunately, Sanders did not have that same foresight and frequently played into the Russiagate narrative.
Last week, during a Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas, when criticized for his supporters' behavior on social media, Sanders pointed the finger at Russia . "All of us remember 2016, and what we remember is efforts by Russians and others to try to interfere in our elections and divide us up. I'm not saying that's happening, but it would not shock me," Sanders said.
In comments after The Post story was published, Sanders said he was briefed on Russian interference "about a month ago." Sanders raised the issue with the timing of the story, having been published on the eve of the Nevada caucus. But the story did not slow down Sanders' momentum in the polls, and he came out the clear victor of the Nevada caucus. Sanders' victory seemed to rattle the Democratic establishment, and some wild accusations were thrown around during coverage of the caucus.
Political analyst James Carville appeared on MSNBC as Sanders took an early and substantial lead in Nevada. Carville said, "Right now, it's about 1:15 Moscow time. This thing is going very well for Vladimir Putin. I promise you. He's probably staying up watching this right now." What could be played off as a joke was followed up with some serious accusations from Carville, "I don't think the Sanders campaign in any way is collusion or collaboration. I think they don't like this story, but the story is a fact, and the reason that the story is a fact is Putin is doing everything that he can to help Trump, including trying to get Sanders the Democratic nomination."
This delusional attitude about the Russians rigging the Democratic primary is underpinned by claims of meddling from the 2016 election. Central to Robert Mueller's claim that Russia engaged in "multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election" is the St. Petersburg based company, the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
The IRA is accused of running a troll farm that sought to interfere in the 2016 election in favor of Trump over Hillary Clinton. Mueller failed to tie the IRA directly to the Kremlin, and further research into their social media campaign shows most of the posts had nothing to do with the election. A study on the IRA by the firm New Knowledge found just "11 percent" of the IRA's content "was related to the election."
Many believe the Russian government is responsible for hacking the DNC email server and providing the emails to WikiLeaks. But there are many holes in Mueller's story to support this claim. And WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange – who Mueller did not interview – has said the Russian government was not the source of the emails.
Regardless of who leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, they show that DNC leadership had a clear bias against Bernie Sanders back in 2016. The emails' contents were never disputed, and Democratic voters had every right to see the corruption within the DNC. With the release of the DNC emails, and later the Podesta emails, the American people were able to make a more informed choice in the presidential election. This type of transparency provided by WikiLeaks would be celebrated in a healthy democracy, not portrayed as the work of a foreign power.
Sanders would be wise to keep a watchful eye on how the DNC operates over the next few months. The debacle that was the Iowa caucus shows the Democrats can "stoke division" and "stir controversy" just fine on their own.
These claims of Russian meddling will continue throughout the election season. President Trump's defense that he is "tough" on Russia is nothing to be proud of, but that is inevitably where these accusations lead. Trump is encouraged to be more hawkish towards Russia in an effort to quiet the claims of Putin's preference for him. And if Bernie Sanders plays into this narrative now, can we believe that he will make any real foreign policy change towards Russia if he gets the nomination and beats Trump?
Dave DeCamp is assistant editor at Antiwar.com and a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn NY, focusing on US foreign policy and wars. He is on Twitter at @decampdave .
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Mar 04, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
MrWebster on Wed, 03/04/2020 - 1:00pm
What you describe is probably why Russiagate spread so easily to so many people. Nothing happened in previous elections? Everything you describe never happened as you point out. The American electoral system was and is pristine and virginal.
Until the Russians came and destroyed American democracy through social media themes, memes, and retweets.
The American electoral system was never brutally corrupted by rigged votes, voter suppression on the scale of hundreds of thousands, deliberately miscounted votes, voter fraud, etc. Americans never did to each other anything as bad as what the Russians did to Americans.
Of course, for me never worked as I worked in primaries of a democratic machine dominated city. I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election interference.
Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn.
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Mar 03, 2020 | www.usatoday.com
Based on the tone of Tuesday's Democratic debate, you would think the Kremlin has already determined the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Former Vice President Joe Biden said Russians are "engaged now, as I speak, in interfering in our election." Billionaire Tom Steyer said there is "an attack by a hostile foreign power on our democracy right now." Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg charged that Russia was backing Sen. Bernie Sanders , I-Vt., to ensure a Trump victory in November.
Clearly, the Russia scaremongering is in full swing. Last week's intelligence community testimony that the Kremlin is backing President Donald Trump made headline news. Another report emerged alleging Moscow is backing Sanders . Biden claimed that Bernie-backing Russian bots have been attacking him on Facebook. And Hillary Clinton told a foreign audience that " Russians are back in our cyber systems ," and that "anyone who tries to deny it" is living in a "sad dreamworld."
... ... ...
But the Russian interference narrative has become entrenched. When intelligence community election expert Shelby Pierson speculated to the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting that Russia was trying to help President Trump get reelected, it quickly leaked, became a front-page story in The New York Times and precipitated the usual outrage. It took a few days for the less dramatic truth to catch up -- that there was no evidence for the "misleading" supposition that the Kremlin is pro-Trump; at best Russia may have a "preference" for a "deal-maker."
However, it is not clear how Russia would benefit from a Trump second term, since the first one has not worked out well for them. President Trump has imposed sanctions on Russia , expelled Russian diplomats , sent arms to Ukraine , sold Patriot missiles to Poland , undercut Russia's natural gas markets in Europe, pursued strategic nuclear modernization while not rushing to renew the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and even killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria.
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Dec 28, 2019 | caitlinjohnstone.com
This is getting really, really, really weird. WikiLeaks has WikiLeaks has published yet another set of leaked internal documents from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) adding even more material to the mountain of evidence that we've been lied to about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria last year which resulted in airstrikes upon that nation from the US, UK and France.
... ... ...
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Feb 25, 2020 | angrybearblog.com
I am old enough to remember when many very serious people ascribed the rise of Donald Trump to economic anxiety. The hypthesis never fit the facts (his supporters had higher incomes on average than Clinton's) but it has become absurd. The level of self reported economic anxiety is extraordinarily low
Gallup reports "Record High optimism about Personal Finances in U.S." with 74% predicting they will be better off next year.
Yet now the Democratic party has an insurgent candidate candidate in the lead. I hasten to stress that I am not saying Sanders supporters have much in common with Trump supporters (young vs old, strong hispanic support vs they hate Trump etc etc etc). But both appeal to anger and advocate a radical break with business as usual. Both reject party establishments. Also Warren if a little bit less so.
Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry. He remains unpopular in spite of an economy performing very well (and perceived to be performing very well).
Whatever is going on in 2020, it sure isn't economic anxiety.
Yet there is clearly anger and desire for radical change.
I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased inequality. I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump, but, then I don't watch Fox News.
One other thing which it isn't is rejection of the guy who came before Trump. Obama has a Real Clear Politics average favorable rating of 59% and unfavorable of 36.1 % vastly vastly better than any currently active politician. (Sanders is doing relatively very well at net -2.7 compared to Obama's + 22.9) He is not rejected. He is not considered a failure. Yet only a small majority is interested in any sort of going back to the way things were.
likbez , February 25, 2020 12:37 am
EMichael , February 25, 2020 10:39 amRobert ,
Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry.
Many Trump "angry supporters" in 2016 used to belong to "anybody but Hillary" class (and they included a noticeable percentage of Bernie supporters, who felt betrayed by DNC) .
They are lost for Trump as he now in many aspects represents the "new Hillary" and the slogan "anybody but Trump" is growing in popularity. Even among Republicans: Trump definitely already lost a large part of anti-war Republicans and independents. As well as. most probably, a part of working class as he did very little for them outside of effects of military Keynesianism.
I suspect he also lost a part of military voters, those who supported Tulsi. They will never vote for Trump.
He also lost a part of "technocratic" voters resentful of the rule of financial oligarchy (anti-swampers), as his incompetence is now an undisputable fact.
He also lost Ron Paul's libertarians, who voted for him in 2016.
How "Coronavirus recession", if any, might affect 2020 elections is difficult to say, but in any case this is an unfavorable for Trump event.
likbez , February 25, 2020 12:19 pm"I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump, but, then I don't watch Fox News."
Coming to you since 1965. It's just that immigrants are now added to blacks. Trump took 50 years of the Southern Strategy, took the dogwhistles completely out of the closet and wore his racism right on his chest. Helped that he had over 50 years of experience as a racist, it came naturally to him.
And he attracted a new rw base, those who were not satisfied with dog whistles and/or did not hear them.
I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased inequality.
It is actually very easy to understand: the middle class fared very poorly since 1991. See https://www.cnbc.com/id/44962589 . Now "the chickens come home to roost," so to speak.
The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1980 with the election of Reagan (aka "the Quiet Coup") was that "the rising tide lifts all boats." -- the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of lower strata of the population too. This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which is based on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger is directed against the neoliberal establishment.
The anger toward immigrants is, in fact, a displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80% of the population.
The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures as Lloyd "we are doing God's" Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and "political establishment" the key figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember "Lock her up" movement in 2016).
Resentment against spending huge amounts of money for wars for sustaining and enlarging the global USA-centered neoliberal empire is another factor. In this sense, impoverishment and shrinking of the middle class in the USA is similar to the same impoverishment during the last days of the British colonial empire.
That's why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade.
In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the "revolutionary situation" when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn't govern "as usual" and "the deplorable" do not want to live "as usual". The situation when according to Hegel, "quantity turns into quality," or as Marx said "ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses."
In 2016 that resulted in the election of Trump.
Add to this the fact that the neoliberal establishment (represented by both parties) now is clearly anti-social (the fact that a private equity shark Romney was a presidential candidate and then was elected as senator tells a lot about the level of degradation) and is unwilling to solve burning problems with medical insurance, minimal wage and other "the New Deal" elements of social infrastructure.
Democratic Party platform now is to the right of Eisenhower republicans.
That dooms the party candidates like CIA-democrat Major Pete, or "the senator from the credit card companies" Biden, and create an opening for political figures like Sanders (which are passionately hated by DNC)
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Feb 24, 2020 | caitlinjohnstone.com
Following shocking reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post that Moscow is simultaneously working to both re-elect Donald Trump and ensure the nomination of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary race, NNC has obtained further information confirming that nearly all candidates currently running for president are in fact covert agents of the Russian government.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the lone candidate not literally conducting espionage on behalf of the Russian government is Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
"Intelligence has revealed that Mr. Buttigieg is at this time the only candidate who we can count on not to place our nation's interests square in the hands of Vladimir Putin," an anonymous source in the Central Intelligence Agency told NNC on Saturday.
"In fact Mr. Buttigieg is the only candidate running with the skill, the experience and the multilingual relatability needed to bridge our nation's deep divisions and bring Americans together in this time of uncontrolled hostility," the CIA source continued.
"Because in truth, the unity of our togetherness is in the freedom of our democracy," added the source. "The long and winding road to the American flag was built upon the steps of our founding fathers. You don't have to be a big shot Washington insider to see that the problems our nation faces are tearing us apart at our own peril with radical divisive rhetoric saying you need to burn down the establishment and voice a concrete foreign policy position. And that's why I for one believe we don't have to choose between revolution and the status quo: we can come together and find solutions that help the working class and billionaires."
Experts say these new revelations on Russian election interference should consume one hundred percent of all news coverage for the entirety of 2020, and that Democrats should definitely spend all their time from now until November focusing solely on President Trump's suspicious ties to the Russian government.
"I can't think of a single thing that could possibly go wrong if Democrats focused exclusively on the possibility that the president conspired with Vladimir Putin in the lead-up to the election in November," said Les Overton of the influential think tank Americans for an American America. "If Democrats want to prevent another four years of Trump they should hit him where they know it hurts: nonstop 24/7 Russia conspiracy theories. That's what Americans really care about."
Asked if it's possible that undue emphasis on Russian collusion could prove a fruitless endeavor given Trump's soaring approval rating after impeachment resulted in his acquittal and the Mueller report failed to indict a single American for conspiring with the Russian government, Overton disagreed and said this time will be "like, totally different."
"Democrats should definitely invest all of their mental and emotional energy in this Trump-Russia scandal, because this time it's a sure thing," Overton said. "Put all your eggs in this basket and get your hopes up very, very high. The big BOOM is coming any minute now, I promise."
Overton then departed with an envelope full of cash which he said was his life savings, reportedly to invest in lottery tickets.
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Apr 26, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
5. The reds are back under the beds
There's always a bit of judgment and vengeance inherent to the factional shenanigans of Australia's Liberal party, but its refreshed vocabulary warrants inclusion as the fifth sign. Michael Sukkar, the member for Deakin, has been recorded in a dazzling rant declaring war on a "socialist" incursion into a party whose leader is a former merchant banker who pledged to rule for "freedom, the individual and the market" the very day he was anointed.
Sukkar's insistence is wonderful complement to the performance art monologues of former Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop on Sky, where she weekly decries socialism is to blame for everything from alcoholism to energy prices.
The reds may not be under the beds quite yet, but if Sukkar's convinced some commie pinkos are already gatecrashing cocktail events with the blue-tie set, they're certainly on his mind.
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Feb 22, 2020 | www.amazon.com
Boston Bill , March 23, 2019
Programs, programs, get your program here.Erving L. Briggs , April 2, 2019I received my copy just a few days before the Mueller investigation closed shop. There is an old saying "You can't tell the players without a program." As the aftermath of the Mueller investigation begins, you need this book. Some pundits and observers of the political scene have observed that the Mueller investigation didn't come about because of any real concern about "Trump Russia collusion," it was manufactured to protect the deep state from a non-political interloper. That's the case Diana West makes and does it with her exceptional knowledge of the Cold War and the current jihad wars. Not to mention her deadly aim with her rhetorical darts.
History RepeatsThe Red Thread by Diana West
Diana states, "the anti-Trump conspiracy is not about Democrats and Republicans. It is not about the ebb and flow of political power, lawfully and peacefully transferred. It is about globalists and nationalists, just as the president says. They are locked in the old and continuous Communist/anti-Communist struggle, and fighting to the end, whether We, the anti-Communists, recognize it or not."Diana traces the Red Thread running through the swamp, she names names and relates the history of the Red players. She asks the questions, Why? Why so many Soviet-style acts of deception perpetrated from inside the federal government against the American electoral process? Why so many uncorroborated dossiers of Russian provenance influencing our politics? Why such a tangle of communist and socialist roots in the anti-Trump conspiracy?
In this book, these questions will be answered.If you have read her book "American Betrayal," I'm sure you will have a good idea about what is going on. I did. I just didn't know the major players and the red history behind each of them.
The book is very interesting and short, only 104 pages, but it is not finished yet. Easy to read but very disturbing to know the length and width of the swamp, the depth, we may not know for a long time. I do feel better knowing that there are people like Diana uncovering and shining a light into the darkness. Get the book, we all need to know why this is happening and who the enemies are behind it. Our freedom depends on it.
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Feb 07, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,One of the more interesting aspects of the nauseating impeachment trial in the Senate was the repeated vilification of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.
To hate Russia has become dogma on both sides of the political aisle, in part because no politician has really wanted to confront the lesson of the 2016 election, which was that most Americans think that the federal government is basically incompetent and staffed by career politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell who should return back home and get real jobs .
Worse still, it is useless, and much like the one trick pony the only thing it can do is steal money from the taxpayers and waste it on various types of self-gratification that only politicians can appreciate. That means that the United States is engaged is fighting multiple wars against make-believe enemies while the country's infrastructure rots and a host of officially certified grievance groups control the public space.
It sure doesn't look like Kansas anymore.
The fact that opinion polls in Europe suggest that many Europeans would rather have Vladimir Putin than their own hopelessly corrupt leaders is suggestive. One can buy a whole range of favorable t-shirts featuring Vladimir Putin on Ebay , also suggesting that most Americans find the official Russophobia narrative both mysterious and faintly amusing. They may not really be into the expressed desire of the huddled masses in D.C. to go to war to bring true U.S. style democracy to the un-enlightened.
One also must wonder if the Democrats are reading the tea leaves correctly. If they think that a slogan like "Honest Joe Biden will keep us safe from Moscow" will be a winner in 2020 they might again be missing the bigger picture. Since the focus on Trump's decidedly erratic behavior will inevitably die down after the impeachment trial is completed, the Democrats will have to come up with something compelling if they really want to win the presidency and it sure won't be the largely fictionalized Russian threat.
Nevertheless, someone should tell Congressman Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, to shut up as he is becoming an international embarrassment. His "closing arguments" speeches last week were respectively two-and-a-half hours and ninety minutes long and were inevitably praised by the mainstream media as "magisterial," "powerful," and "impressive." The Washington Post 's resident Zionist extremist Jennifer Rubin labeled it "a grand slam" while legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called it "dazzling." Gail Collins of the New York Times dubbed it "a great job" and added that Schiff is now "a rock star." Daily Beast enthused that the remarks "will go down in history " and progressive activist Ryan Knight called it "a closing statement for the ages." Hollywood was also on board with actress Debra Messing tweeting "I am in tears. Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our country."
Actually, a better adjective would have been "scary" and not merely due to its elaboration of the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Trump, much of which was undeniably true even if not necessarily impeachable. It was scary because it was a warmongers speech, full of allusions to Russia, to Moscow's "interference" in 2016, and to the ridiculous proposition that if Trump were to be defeated in 2020 he might not concede and Russia could even intervene militarily in the United States in support of its puppet.
Schiff insisted that Trump must be removed now to "assure the integrity" of the 2020 election. He elaborated somewhat ambiguously that "The president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won." Schiff also unleashed one of the most time honored but completely lame excuses for going to war, claiming that military assistance to Ukraine that had been delayed by Trump was essential for U.S. national security. He said "As one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don't have to fight Russia here."
Schiff, a lawyer who has never had to put his life on the line for anything and whose son sports a MOSSAD t-shirt, is one of those sunshine soldiers who finds it quite acceptable if someone else does the dying. Journalist Max Blumenthal observed that "Liberals used to mock Bush supporters when they used this jingoistic line during the war on Iraq. Now they deploy it to justify an imperialist proxy war against a nuclear power." Aaron Mate at The Nation added that "For all the talk about Russia undermining faith in U.S. elections, how about Russiagaters like Schiff fear-mongering w/ hysterics like this? Let's assume Ukraine did what Trump wanted: announce a probe of Burisma. Would that delegitimize a 2020 U.S. election? This is a joke."
Over at Antiwar Daniel Lazare explains how the Wednesday speech was "a fear-mongering, sword-rattling harangue that will not only raise tensions with Russia for no good reason, but sends a chilling message to [Democratic Party] dissidents at home that if they deviate from Russiagate orthodoxy by one iota, they'll be driven from the fold."
The orthodoxy that Lazare was writing about includes the established Nancy Pelosi/Chuck Schumer narrative that Russia invaded "poor innocent Ukraine" in 2014, that it interfered in the 2016 election to defeat Hillary Clinton, and that it is currently trying to smear Joe Biden. One might add to that the growing consensus that Russia can and will interfere again in 2020 to help Trump. Absent from the narrative is the part how the U.S. intervened in Ukraine first to remove its government and the fact that there is something very unsavory about Joe Biden's son taking a high-paying sinecure board position from a notably corrupt Ukrainian oligarch while his father was Vice President and allegedly directing U.S. assistance to a Ukrainian anti-corruption effort.
On Wednesday, Schiff maintained that "Russia is not a threat to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so again." Not surprisingly, if one substitutes the "United States" for "Russia" and "Kremlin" and changes "Ukraine" to Iran or Venezuela, the Schiff comment actually becomes much more credible.
The compulsion on the part of the Democrats to bring down Trump to avoid having to deal with their own failings has brought about a shift in their established foreign policy, placing the neocons and their friends back in charge. For Schiff, who has enthusiastically supported every failed American military effort since 9/11, today's Russia is the Soviet Union reborn, and don't you forget it pardner! Newsweek is meanwhile reporting that the U.S. military is reading the tea leaves and is gearing up to fight the Russians. Per Schiff, Trump must be stopped as he is part of a grand Russian conspiracy to overthrow everything the United States stands for. If the Kremlin is not stopped now, it's first major step, per Schiff, will be to "remake the map of Europe by dint of military force."
Donald Trump's erratic rule has certainly dismayed many of his former supporters, but the Democratic Party is offering nothing but another helping of George W. Bush/Barack Obama establishment war against the world. We Americans have had enough of that for the past nineteen years. Trump may indeed deserve to be removed based on his actions, but the argument that it is essential to do so because of Russia lurking is complete nonsense. Pretty scary that the apparent chief promoter of that point of view is someone who actually has power in the government, one Adam Schiff, head of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
Chain Man , 10 hours ago linkJ Frank Parnell , 11 hours ago linkIf the USA doesn't have a bogey man to be afraid of, the USA might worry more and to insist on fixing the problems within the Nation.
So many of our politicians are guilty of allowing un constitutional on going act like the removal of Due Process of law for some people and the on going bailout of Global Markets with the US Dollar. The Patriot act and FISA Courts should have been gone.
Sid Finch , 10 hours ago linkI never saw the problem with Russians. They practice the same religion as I do and are mostly the same color...
Archeofuturist , 11 hours ago linkAgreed. He seems as about as close as a leader can get to genuinely liking his country and people. It seems the ones here only give a **** about carbon, Central and South Americans, and cutting off my kids genitalia.
globalintelhub , 11 hours ago linkWell let see.... Who has a historical beef with Russia and controls both parties. I wonder?
Alice-the-dog , 11 hours ago linkIt is scary, but what else can Schiff say? They have no credible arguments against Trump, or for their own party. They are a bunch of lying scumbags that will kill, cheat, steal, mislead, carpet-bag and anything else unethical to achieve their sleazy goals. When Trump wins in a landslide in 2020, they will claim it's because the Russians 'fixed' the election, and the Democratic party will break into pieces arguing about how they failed and what they did wrong. See www.splittingpennies.com
John Hansen , 10 hours ago linkSince the US Sociopaths In Charge have totally Effed up the nation, and a significant portion of the world, they have to have SOMEBODY to blame. They certainly won't take the blame they deserve themselves.
motiveunclear , 13 hours ago linkDon't leave out Israel, they aren't the American peoples friend either.
44magnum , 12 hours ago linkThere used to be this thing we don't hear used much anymore called "diplomacy" and another useful thing in international politics called "tact".
toady , 13 hours ago linkWhat the ZOG wants the ZOG gets
sillycat , 13 hours ago linkMcCarthyism II. Will the US be able put down a second "red scare"? Tune in next week. Same bat time, same bat channel.
hispanicLoser , 13 hours ago linklots of words and no answer to the title question. Giraldi does not see the deep ideological problems: Russia is not trying to diversify into a PoC country, they do not worship gays and may be the only white people nation with sustaining birth rate. The US will go to war there is no way to let this continue.
Jeffersonian Liberal , 12 hours ago linkThe level of Russia hate coming out of the dems is so much greater than that coming out of repubs that one can safely ignore this retarded article.
Dan The Man , 13 hours ago linkTrue. But their hatred is pretended hatred. It is a form of projection.
vasilievich , 13 hours ago linkIts our own fault.
The smart ppl are doing a lousy job of informing the dumb ones about accepted policy like "America Always Needs An Enemy". Smart ones understand that, and see the bigger game because of it.
We fight the dumb ones who believe Russian boogeyman crap, instead of helping them understand they are being misled on who the enemy really is. The dumb ones then fight back and further entrench that brainwashing.
ombon , 13 hours ago linkI'm trying to imagine the Russian Army marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. But first, across the Atlantic Ocean.
Dan The Man , 13 hours ago linkIt is appropriate to recall the words of Joseph Goebbels: "Give me the media, and I will make a herd of pigs from any nation," and pigs are easy to drive to the slaughterhouse. Only Russia can really resist such a situation in the world. Therefore, she is the enemy.
south40_dreams , 14 hours ago linkComing Soon... Why the Gullibles Will Believe Anything
whatisthat , 14 hours ago link....and the many thieves are gulping at the money spigot.....time to shut that sucker OFF
Chain Man , 15 hours ago linkI would observe there is evidence the corrupt establishment has done more damage to the US than any other country could ever imagine...
The Centrist Democrats and Republicans want to paint the old school God and Country Conservatives Equality and Justice for the USA (Nationalist) into being Russian. How dare we expect enforcement of the Laws on the books against them. They want to be deemed Royalty with all the Elitist Rights.
The old rally call about Russia was always Communist Russia but, they don't do that anymore? Why ? They love their Communist China wage slaves. The Centrist love Communist labor in the name of profits . Human rights be damned it's all about the Global Elitist to them now.
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Feb 19, 2020 | angrybearblog.com
likbez , February 19, 2020 12:31 pm
Does not matter.
It looks like Bloomberg is finished. He just committed political suicide with his comments about farmers and metal workers.
BTW Bloomberg's plan is highly hypocritical -- like is Bloomberg himself.
During the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" was staged in the USA by "managerial elite" which like Soviet nomenklatura (which also staged a neoliberal coup d'état) changed sides and betrayed the working class.
So those neoliberal scoundrels reversed the class compromise embodied in the New Deal.
The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the neoliberal managerial class and financial oligarchy who got to power via the "Quiet Coup" was the global labor arbitrage in which production is outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations.
So all those "improving education" plans are, to a large extent, the smoke screen over the fact that the US workers now need to compete against highly qualified and lower cost immigrants and outsourced workforce.
The fact is that it is very difficult to find for US graduates in STEM disciplines a decent job, and this is by design.
Also, after the "Reagan neoliberal revolution" ( actually a coup d'état ), profits were maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of the immigrant workforce (the collapse of the USSR helped greatly ). They push down wages and compete for jobs with their domestic counterparts, including the recent graduates. So the situation since 1991 was never too bright for STEM graduates.
By canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, the neoliberal elite saws the seed of the current populist backlash. The "soft neoliberal" backbone of the Democratic Party (Clinton wing) were incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat -- the rejection of the establishment candidate by the US population and first of all by the working class. The result has been the neo-McCarthyism campaign and the attempt to derail Trump via color revolution spearheaded by Brennan-Obama factions in CIA and FBI.
See also recently published "The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite" by Michael Lind.
One of his quotes:
The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.
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Jan 08, 2020 | lareviewofbooks.org
A FEW DAYS AFTER Donald Trump's electoral upset in 2016, Club for Growth co-founder Stephen Moore told an audience of Republican House members that the GOP was "now officially a Trump working class party." No longer the party of traditional Reaganite conservatism, the GOP had been converted instead "into a populist America First party." As he uttered these words, Moore says, "the shock was palpable" in the room.
The Club for Growth had long dominated Republican orthodoxy by promoting low tax rates and limited government. Any conservative candidate for political office wanting to reap the benefits of the Club's massive fundraising arm had to pay homage to this doctrine. For one of its formerly leading voices to pronounce the transformation of this orthodoxy toward a more populist nationalism showed just how much the ground had shifted on election night.
To writer Michael Lind, Trump's victory, along with Brexit and other populist stirrings in Europe, was an outright declaration of "class war" by alienated working-class voters against what he calls a "university-credentialed overclass" of managerial elites. The title of Lind's new book, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite , leaves no doubt as to where his sympathies lie, though he's adamant that he's not some sort of guru for a " smarter Trumpism ," as some have labeled him.
Lind cautions against a turn to populism, which he believes to be too personality-centered and intellectually incoherent -- not to mention, too demagogic -- to help solve the terminal crisis of "technocratic neoliberalism" with its rule by self-righteous and democratically unaccountable "experts" with hyperactive Twitter handles. Only a return to what Lind calls "democratic pluralism" will help stem the tide of the populist revolt.
The New Class War is a breath of fresh air. Many on the left have been incapable of coming to terms with Hillary Clinton's defeat. The result has been the stifling climate of a neo-McCarthyism, in which the only explanation for Trump's success was an unholy alliance of "Putin stooges" and unrepentant "white supremacists."
To Lind, the case is much more straightforward: while the vast majority of Americans supports Social Security spending and containing unskilled immigration, the elites of the bipartisan swamp favor libertarian free trade policies combined with the steady influx of unskilled migrants to help suppress wage levels in the United States. Trump had outflanked his opponents in the Republican primaries and Clinton in the general election by tacking left on the economy (he refused to lay hands on Social Security) and right on immigration.
The strategy has since been successfully repeated in the United Kingdom by Boris Johnson, and it looks, for now, like a foolproof way for conservative parties in the West to capture or defend their majorities against center-left parties that are too beholden to wealthy, metropolitan interests to seriously attract working-class support. Berating the latter as irredeemably racist certainly doesn't help either.
What happened in the preceding decades to produce this divide in Western democracies? Lind's narrative begins with the New Deal, which had brought to an end what he calls "the first class war" in favor of a class compromise between management and labor. This first class war is the one we are the most familiar with: originating in the Industrial Revolution, which had produced the wretchedly poor proletariat, it soon led to the rise of competing parties of organized workers on the one hand and the liberal bourgeoisie on the other, a clash that came to a head in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Then, in the 1930s, while the world was writhing from the consequences of the Great Depression, a series of fascist parties took the reigns in countries from Germany to Spain. To spare the United States a similar descent into barbarism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, in which the working class would find a seat at the bargaining table under a government-supervised tripartite system where business and organized labor met seemingly as equals and in which collective bargaining would help the working class set sector-wide wages.
This class compromise ruled unquestioned for the first decades of the postwar era. It was made possible thanks to the system of democratic pluralism, which allowed working-class and rural constituencies to actively partake in mass-membership organizations like unions as well as civic and religious institutions that would empower these communities to shape society from the ground up.
But then, amid the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" set in that sought to reverse the class compromise. The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the newly emboldened managerial class was "global labor arbitrage" in which production is outsourced to countries with lower wage levels and laxer regulations; alternatively, profits can be maximized by putting downward pressure on domestic wages through the introduction of an unskilled, non-unionized immigrant workforce that competes for jobs with its unionized domestic counterparts. By one-sidedly canceling the class compromise that governed the capitalist societies after World War II, Lind concludes, the managerial elite had brought the recent populist backlash on itself.
Likewise, only it can contain this backlash by returning to the bargaining table and reestablishing the tripartite system it had walked away from. According to Lind, the new class peace can only come about on the level of the individual nation-state because transnational treaty organizations like the EU cannot allow the various national working classes to escape the curse of labor arbitrage. This will mean that unskilled immigration will necessarily have to be curbed to strengthen the bargaining power of domestic workers. The free-market orthodoxy of the Club for Growth will also have to take a backseat, to be replaced by government-promoted industrial strategies that invest in innovation to help modernize their national economies.
Under which circumstances would the managerial elites ever return to the bargaining table? "The answer is fear," Lind suggests -- fear of working-class resentment of hyper-woke, authoritarian elites. Ironically, this leaves all the agency with the ruling class, who first acceded to the class compromise, then canceled it, and is now called on to forge a new one lest its underlings revolt.
Lind rightly complains all throughout the book that the old mass-membership based organizations of the 20th century have collapsed. He's coy, however, about who would reconstitute them and how. At best, Lind argues for a return to the old system where party bosses and ward captains served their local constituencies through patronage, but once more this leaves the agency with entities like the Republicans and Democrats who have a combined zero members. As the third-party activist Howie Hawkins remarked cunningly elsewhere ,
American parties are not organized parties built around active members and policy platforms; they are shifting coalitions of entrepreneurial candidate campaign organizations. Hence, the Democratic and Republican Parties are not only capitalist ideologically; they are capitalistically run enterprises.
Thus, they would hardly be the first options one would think of to reinvigorate the forces of civil society toward self-rule from the bottom up.
The key to Lind's fraught logic lies hidden in plain sight -- in the book's title. Lind does not speak of "class struggle ," the heroic Marxist narrative in which an organized proletariat strove for global power; no, "class war " smacks of a gloomy, Hobbesian war of all against all in which no side truly stands to win.
In the epigraph to the book, Lind cites approvingly the 1949 treatise The Vital Center by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who wrote that "class conflict, pursued to excess, may well destroy the underlying fabric of common principle which sustains free society." Schlesinger was just one among many voices who believed that Western societies after World War II were experiencing the "end of ideology." From now on, the reasoning went, the ideological battles of yesteryear were settled in favor of a more disinterested capitalist (albeit New Deal–inflected) governance. This, in turn, gave rise to the managerial forces in government, the military, and business whose unchecked hold on power Lind laments. The midcentury social-democratic thinker Michael Harrington had it right when he wrote that "[t]he end of ideology is a shorthand way of saying the end of socialism."
Looked at from this perspective, the break between the postwar Fordist regime and technocratic neoliberalism isn't as massive as one would suppose. The overclass antagonists of The New Class War believe that they derive their power from the same "liberal order" of the first-class peace that Lind upholds as a positive utopia. A cursory glance at the recent impeachment hearings bears witness to this, as career bureaucrats complained that President Trump unjustifiably sought to change the course of an American foreign policy that had been nobly steered by them since the onset of the Cold War. In their eyes, Trump, like the Brexiteers or the French yellow vest protesters, are vulgar usurpers who threaten the stability of the vital center from polar extremes.
A more honest account of capitalism would also acknowledge its natural tendencies to persistently contract and to disrupt the social fabric. There is thus no reason to believe why some future class compromise would once and for all quell these tendencies -- and why nationalistically operating capitalist states would not be inclined to confront each other again in war.
Stourley Kracklite • 20 days ago • edited ,
Reagan was a free-trader and a union buster. Lind's people jumped the Democratic ship to vote for Reagan in (lemming-like) droves. As Republicans consolidated power over labor with cheap goods from China and the meth of deficit spending Democrats struggled with being necklaced as the party of civil rights.
The idea that people who are well-informed ought not to govern is a sad and sick cover story that the culpable are forced to chant in their caves until their days are done, the reckoning being too great.
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Dec 30, 2019 | thegrayzone.com
Why are so many intelligence veterans throwing their weight behind a young Indiana mayor with such a thin foreign policy resume?
These questions continue to loom large over the 2020 Democratic primary field: Who is Pete Buttigieg? And what is he doing here?
Seemingly overnight, the once obscure mayor of Indiana's fourth-largest city was vaulted to national prominence, with his campaign coffers stuffed with big checks from billionaire benefactors.
The publication of a list of 218 endorsements from "foreign policy and national security professionals" by Buttigieg's campaign deepened the mystery of the mayor's rise.
Some observers have raised questions about Pete Buttigieg's intimate relationship with the national security state , after it was revealed that his campaign had paid nearly $600,000 for "security" to a Blackwater-style military contractor.
Buttigieg's new roster of endorsements from former high-ranking CIA officials, regime-change architects, and global financiers should raise more questions about the real forces propelling his campaign.
Patriot Group is currently under contract w/the US military.
They provide "contractor-owned, contractor-operated intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance aerial detection and monitoring support inside & outside the U.S."
and guard Mayor Pete. https://t.co/Aa5Ogl5K8b pic.twitter.com/6tnXDBPtOA
-- Samuel D. Finkelstein II (@CANCEL_SAM) December 7, 2019
Buttigieg has offered precious few details about his policy plans, and foreign policy is no exception. His campaign website dedicates just five sentences to international affairs, none of which offers any substantive details.
Beyond a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan as a Naval Reservist in 2010, the 37 year-old mayor has no first-hand foreign policy experience to speak of.
As The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal reported , Buttigieg's enjoys a long relationship with the Truman National Security Project, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC that advocates for "muscular liberalism." He has also taken a short, strange trip to Somaliland with a Harvard buddy, Nathaniel Myers, who ultimately became a senior advisor to USAID's Office of Transitional Initiatives. Otherwise, Buttigieg's foreign policy credentials are nil.
Buttigieg's lack of core principles are what might make him so attractive to military contractors and financial institutions, two of the status quo's biggest beneficiaries.
Mayor Pete has effectively positioned himself as a Trojan Horse for the establishment, offering "generational change" that doesn't challenge existing power structures in any concrete way.
A review of Pete for America's FEC disclosures found that the campaign had paid $561,416.82 for "security" to a company called Patriot Group International (PGI), from June 4 to September 9, 2019.
Buttigieg's August 29, 2019 payment of $179,617.04 to PGI represents the single largest security expenditure ever made by a presidential candidate, according to the FEC.
While the exorbitant amount of money raises questions, it is PGI's status as a Blackwater-style mercenary firm that makes Buttigieg's contract so remarkable.
PGI bills itself as a "global mission support provider with expeditionary capabilities, providing services to select clients within the intelligence, defense, and private sector." According to the company's website , it offers services like counter-terrorism, counter-weapons of mass destruction, and drone surveillance.
PGI is currently under a $26.5 million contract with the Department of Defense to provide "contractor-owned, contractor-operated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aerial detection and monitoring support inside and outside the U.S." It is a far cry from securing campaign events held in New Hampshire community centers.
FEC Spending receipts from Pete's campaign pic.twitter.com/GWoDEPUDGE
-- Samuel D. Finkelstein II (@CANCEL_SAM) December 6, 2019
Besides contracting with Buttigieg, PGI's only other record of political work was with Newt Gingrich's 2012 presidential campaign. In a 2016 Inc. Magazine profile , PGI founder Greg Craddock said his company stopped doing political work altogether, following a 2012 incident in which a PGI employee on Gingrich's security detail allegedly assaulted an overzealous Ron Paul supporter.
Why the mercenary firm chose to re-enter politics for the mayor of South Bend, Indiana remains an open question. Whatever the reason, Buttigieg's willingness to line the pockets of military contractors as a candidate might offer further insight into why so many in the national security state are lining up behind him.
The CIA hearts Mayor PeteButtigieg's lengthy roster of endorsements is loaded with former intelligence operatives, national security hardliners, regime-change specialists, and vulture capitalists.
Among Buttigieg's most notable endorsers is David S. Cohen , the deputy director of the CIA from 2015 to 2017, and a former Treasury official under George W. Bush.
Cohen is regarded as a " chief architect " of the crippling sanctions that the Obama administration imposed on Iran, Russia, and North Korea -- earning him the ignominious nickname the " sanctions guru. "
Since leaving government, Cohen has made various think tank appearances to advocate for continued use of sanctions in the aforementioned countries, as well as Venezuela .
The impact of sanctions imposed under Cohen's watch has been equated to " collective punishment ," resulting in economic crises, food and medicine shortages, and tens of thousands of preventable deaths .
In his tenure at the Treasury Department, Cohen was also instrumental in drafting the Patriot Act, which restricted civil liberties and vastly increased the government's surveillance powers in response to 9/11.
Cohen has yet to speak publicly as to why he endorsed Buttigieg.
Buttigieg was likewise endorsed by Charlie Gilbert , former deputy director of the National Clandestine Service, a top-ten leadership position at the CIA. Gilbert's role was to "conceive, plan, and execute complex intelligence operations" against "hostile target [countries]."
Another Buttigieg endorser, John Bair , is the former chief of staff for the CIA's Middle East Task Force.
Dennis Bowden , a 26-year CIA veteran, with much of that time spent in unspecified "executive leadership positions," is also backing Mayor Pete.
The Buttigieg campaign has cited the support of former CIA senior analyst Sue Terry , who made a "record number of contributions to the President's Daily Brief," during her tenure from 2001 to 2008.
Two more CIA endorsements came from former senior intelligence officer Martijn Rasser , and former senior analyst Andrea Kendall-Taylor , who was also an officer at the National Intelligence Council.
If you're thinking, "Wow, that's a lot of CIA endorsements for a relatively unknown, small-town mayor," you're right – and it's just the tip of the iceberg.
More Buttigieg backers include Ned Price , the career CIA analyst who resigned publicly in a February 2017 protest against "the way [Trump] has treated the intelligence community." (Price was also a major Clinton donor, but insisted his resignation was non-partisan).
Another CIA Buttigieg endorser is Jeffrey Edmunds , who moonlighted as a National Security Council member under Presidents Obama and Trump.
Buttigieg was also endorsed by Chris Barton , the CIA's assistant general counsel during the Clinton administration, and Anthony Lake , whom Clinton nominated unsuccessfully to serve as CIA director in 1996.
Mayor Pete's list of spook supporters similarly includes non-CIA intelligence community professionals like Robert Stasio , the former chief of operations at the NSA Cyber Center, and William Wechsler , former deputy assistant secretary for Special Ops at the Department of Defense.
Buttigieg also named Robin Walker , a former deputy intelligence officer for the Director of National Intelligence, as a supporter. Walker now works for corporate weapons contractor Lockheed Martin.
Regime change hit-men and debt colonists jump on the bandwagonYet some of Mayor Pete's most troubling endorsements come from outside of the military-intelligence apparatus.
Buttigieg, for example, lists Fernando Cutz as an endorser. For the first 16 months of the Trump administration, Cutz was the national security council director for South America, where he led US policy on Venezuela and was credited with outlining regime-change plans for the president.
Since leaving government, Cutz has continued to support the Trump administration's regime-change efforts against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro .
As Max Blumenthal reported for The Grayzone, Cutz attended a secret meeting at the DC think tank CSIS dedicated to exploring US military intervention in Venezuela.
Revealing comments from @fscutz , one of the key architects of the US coup in Venezuela, declaring that the goal of intervention is to "restore Venezuela's place as an upper middle class country" https://t.co/jZsNLu5rWB pic.twitter.com/2IX8d1n41P
-- Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 15, 2019
Another Buttigieg endorser is Jessica Reitz-Curtin , who spent several years in leadership at USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), working alongside Buttigieg's close friend, Nathaniel Myers.
OTI is the de-facto tip of the spear for USAID's regime change efforts. In the case of Venezuela, OTI has bankrolled violent, right-wing opposition forces for decades.
There is also plenty of excitement for Buttigieg at the commanding heights of international finance. Matt Kaczmarek , vice president of BlackRock, the world's largest investment manager, controlling nearly $7 trillion in assets, is listed as an endorser of the South Bend mayor.
Kaczmarek previously served as the NSC's director of Brazil and Southern Cone affairs in the Obama administration, when the US backed a right-wing parliamentary coup against President Dilma Roussef.
BlackRock has massive holdings in Brazilian agribusiness, and is a major factor in the environmental degradation of the Amazon region. BlackRock's practices have been so destructive to the region that AmazonWatch named the financial behemoth the "world's largest investor in deforestation."
Kaczmarek is a perfect embodiment of the revolving door through which high-ranking government employees enter the private sector and reap the rewards of policies they previously helped implement. In 2013, while Kaczmarek was crafting US economic policy towards Brazil, then-Vice President Joseph Biden was urging the country to open its economy further to foreign capital.
From 2014 to the present, BlackRock has substantially increased its investment in Brazil, according to the AmazonWatch report. Now at the helm of the company, Kaczmarek stands to profit handsomely from the same economic liberalization policies that Brazil was goaded into adopting at his direction.
Buttigieg's list of endorsers likewise includes Karen Mathiasen , former acting executive US director at the World Bank; as well as Julie T. Katzman , COO of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Both organizations have long histories of using debt to impose the will of US policymakers onto poor countries.
Mathiasen, who previously served as deputy assistant secretary for debt and development policy at the Treasury Department, was intimately involved in the administration of what has been dubbed " debt colonialism ." Under this cynical practice, unsustainable levels of debt are used as a pretext to demand that debtor nations privatize government functions, impose austerity, and allow greater exploitation by global capital.
The IDB where Katzman worked plays a similar role in enforcing the Washington Consensus across the Western hemisphere. Wielding debt as its weapon, IDB policies maintain "[Latin America's] subordinated place in the global economy," argues Professor Victor Sepúlveda , author of Industrial Colonialism in Latin America: The Third Stage .
Empire's empty vesselObscure presidential candidates don't typically garner hundreds of elite national security endorsements before a single vote is cast. So what do these spooks and vulture capitalists see in Mayor Pete?
It can't be Buttigieg's foreign policy resume, because he doesn't have one. He hasn't proposed any notable policies to distinguish himself from the other corporate-friendly candidates, so that can't be it either. Some have posited that Mayor Pete may be a CIA asset himself, but the supporting evidence is circumstantial at best.
Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion is that they see Buttigieg as an empty vessel. Opportunistic and unmoored by ideology or political goals beyond his advancing his career, Buttigieg is the ideal candidate for those who seek to maintain existing hierarchies. Indeed, his national security endorsement list is filled with people who keep America's imperial machine humming along smoothly.
What is the thread that connects the CIA, USAID, and the World Bank? All three institution exist to prop up a grossly unequal global order in which a tiny sliver of the population hordes unimaginable wealth, while the mass of people get by on next to nothing.
At a time when that order looks increasingly untenable, with anti-austerity protests breaking out from Chile , to France, to Lebanon , Mayor Pete makes perfect sense.
Samuel D. Finkelstein is a political activist, writer, and student at Seton Hall Law School. Follow him on Twitter at @Cancel_Sam .
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Jan 29, 2020 | off-guardian.org
Charlotte Russe ,
Trump doesn't have a thing to fear he's been a huge asset to the security state, whose Russiagate theatrics provided mainstream media news with just enough bullshit to distract the public, so that Trump could never be aggressively attacked from the Left. For the last three years, all the "resistance oxygen" was sucked up by the warmongering against Russia. Meanwhile, this enabled Trump to successfully pass a slew of reactionary legislation and fasttrack numerous lifetime appointments to the federal court without barely a whimper from the phony Dems. In fact, the Democrats unanimously voted for Trump's military budget. The same idiot they called unhinged was given the power to start WWIII.No matter how much liberals complain–the wealthy are happy with the status quo and the right-wing Evangelicals are as pleased as punch. However, there's quite a large number of disaffected Trump voters looking at Tulsi, but could eventually come Bernie's way. Especially, if Tulsi endorses Bernie. This discontented bunch includes the working-poor, the indebted young, and all the folks who are not doing economically well under Trump's fabulous stock market. It especially includes the military families who were promised an end to the miserable foreign interventions. Bernie, has some appeal to these folks. His platform certainly resonates with all those who can barely pay their health insurance
premiums, and whose salary is NOT nearly considered a living wage. But Bernie could win hands-down and steal Trump's base, if he only had the courage to UNAPOLOGETICALLY speak out against US imperialism and connect all the dots explaining how the security state plundered the treasury for decades f–king over the working-class.
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Jan 24, 2020 | off-guardian.org
"You didn't think that one through, did you, @eliothiggins sweetie? You're not in the ladies' lingerie trade now. This discussion is about truth, which endures, is not held together by elastic, and is not for sale." ~Peter Hitchens responding to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat over the OPCW scandal on Twitter – 2 January 2020.
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Jan 24, 2020 | off-guardian.org
Kevin Smith
"You didn't think that one through, did you, @eliothiggins sweetie? You're not in the ladies' lingerie trade now. This discussion is about truth, which endures, is not held together by elastic, and is not for sale."
Peter Hitchens responding to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat over the OPCW scandal on Twitter – 2 January 2020.Like many, I've been following the Douma scandal for some time and particularly since the OPCW whistleblowers and leaked emails blew the lid off the official narrative that Assad used chemical weapons there.
This issue is being discussed on one of my 'go to' accounts on Twitter – Peter Hitchens who has brought this to the attention of the mainstream .
For the past few weeks he's been debating the topic with Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, Scott Lucas and various Middle East based journalists who created and then pushed the false narrative.
In fact, it's not really a debate. Peter Hitchens is quite literally slaughtering these narrative managers – his logic and clear thinking – and wit exposing the numerous gaps in their story and their desperate deflections.
Hitchens position is not exactly the same as many of us here hold – that Douma was a clear false flag. What he is saying is the evidence points to there being no chemical attack by the Syrian government, the pretext used for the attack on Syria. He doesn't wish to speculate on matters which aren't conclusively proven, for example precisely on what did actually happen.
I respect that position in many ways and his refusal to comment on the dead civilians in the Douma images makes sense from a journalist in the mainstream. I think by having a position which is clear and unassailable enables him to easily brush off his online detractors and not allow them to deflect to other issues.
While I don't agree with everything he says, Hitchens has a calm and rational argument for all the issues he covers. This puts clear ground between him and his online opponents who often resort to childish abuse.
My 80-year old mum admires him too. She describes him as 'frightfully posh'. Perhaps someone who might have belonged in a previous age – but I'm glad we have him in this one.
Anyway, I think we can be sure that Hitchens will continue his important work within the remit he's chosen and others will investigate the unanswered questions which arise from the Douma incident.
Ultimately the question about the dead civilians in the images is simply too dreadful to ignore.
This is because if a chemical attack did not take place and Assad was not responsible it seems highly likely that the civilians including children were murdered to facilitate a fabrication.
And were our own intelligence agencies involved in a staged event, considering the refusal to even establish the basic facts in the days following?
And then, of course, the resulting air strikes nearly caused us to go to war with Russia, with all that would entail.
While these investigations continue, I think it's timely to see where these events fit into the way the general public think and perceive wrongdoing and to try to radically to change this.
I believe more people nowadays recognise that the devastating wars in Iraq and Libya and events in Syria were pushed by our governments and media. They can even accept, when you explain, that we've been assisting terrorists to unseat governments for years. But they seem hesitant of taking the next step and we need to encourage them on this path.
This path leads to recognising the sheer evil in our midst and getting out of this mindset that criminal behavior and lying in governments and in our media is normal or should in any way be tolerated. Perhaps some people appreciate this already but don't want to address it out of concern to what they might find. Maybe some people dread the thought of a global conflict so ignore it. But we need to hammer home the consequences of simply doing nothing.
I've been trying to think of an analogy to try to get this point across. I sometimes say to people, we wouldn't have released a serial killer like Harold Shipman from prison and appointed him Foreign Secretary. Therefore, why do we tolerate a long line of Foreign Secretaries complicit in laying waste to the world? Sadly, with this analogy most people usually look back at me blankly so I have been searching for one more complete and rooted in history which people can relate better to events today.
So, here follows an analogy of a character who lived in the 17th century. His traits, his crimes, the political climate and peoples misguided perceptions in response can be compared to recent events and one particular individual causing havoc in the world today.
Of course I refer to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat.
Eliot ( 'suck my balls' ) Higgins and Titus Oates1. Eliot Higgins and BellingcatHiggins probably doesn't need much of an introduction here. It seems he has no specific qualifications relevant to his role and a bit of a drop-out in terms of education.
Higgins has been quoted as saying :
Before the Arab spring I knew no more about weapons than the average Xbox owner. I had no knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo."
But this didn't prevent him blogging about world events and then setting himself up and his site as investigator for several incidents most notably the shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane over Ukraine and allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria. It's now known that Bellingcat is funded by pro-war groups including the Atlantic Council
Higgins has been accused by chemical weapons experts, academics and independent journalists on the ground of fabricating evidence to reach a predetermined outcome decided on by his funders.
His rise to prominence was fast and apparently some media editors now refer their journalists to Bellingcat fabrications rather than allowing them to do any journalism themselves.
Higgins is currently frantically trying to prop up the Douma narrative against a mountain of evidence disproving his conclusions.
For those who've followed his story, it's clear that Higgins is an intelligence asset, set up to take the fall when the currently collapsing narratives take hold in the mainstream.
2. Titus Oates and the Popish PlotOates was a foul-mouthed charlatan , serial liar and master of deception who lived in the 17th century. His earlier life included being expelled from school and he was labelled a 'dunce' by people who knew him. He became a clergyman and later joined the Navy. His career was plagued by various sex scandals and charges of perjury.
In the 1670s during the time of Charles II, religious tensions threatened to spill over into civil war but the pragmatic King, by and large, kept a lid on it.
However, along with Dr Israel Tonge an anti-Catholic rector, Oates started writing conspiracy theories and inventing plots and later began writing a manuscript alleging of a plan to assassinate King Charles II and replace him with his openly Catholic brother.
When the fabrication started to gather momentum, the King had an audience with Oates and was unconvinced and was said to have found discrepancies in his story.
However, the tense political and religious climate at that time was ideal for conspiracy theories and scaremongering. The King's ministers took Oates at his word and over a dozen Catholics were executed for treason. This story created panic and paranoia lasting several years taking the nation to the brink of civil war.
Over time Oates lies were exposed and when the Catholic King James II came to the throne, he tried Oates with perjury and he was whipped and placed in the pillory.
After James II fled England during the so-called 'Glorious Revolution' King William and Queen Mary pardoned Oates and gave him a pension.
For me, this whole episode has many obvious parallels with Higgins, the long-running Russia and the anti-Semitism witch-hunts in the media and the false narratives over Iraq, Libya and Syria. Like those in power today, Oates had a knack for getting away with it. And I guess we can all relate this to Julian Assange – the victims or whistleblowers being punished and the perpetrators getting off.
I had wondered why James II, often ruthless and unforgiving had not executed Oates. But apparently the crime of perjury even then didn't carry the death sentence. The judge who convicted Oates was said to have tried his best to finish him off through the whipping, though he survived.
But perhaps even the King and judiciary in failing in this or not using other means at their disposal, couldn't comprehend the enormity of his crimes. Oates was after all a rather absurd character, open to ridicule.
Perhaps this is a bit similar to people today when discovering that Eliot Higgins is also a foul-mouthed fraud – but they can't reconcile this comical ex-lingerie employee as a menace to humanity.
3. Modern dayIn the past few weeks I've read various older articles on Iraq and Syria. US troops shooting people for fun from a helicopter . The perpetrators are still free – the whistle-blowers who exposed that, and other events in prison or exile.
Last year we learned about a shocking massacre of Syrian children, unreported in the mainstream media . Mainstream journalists through their one-sided distortions of the conflict and silence, perpetuating the myth that the terrorists who carried out this mass murder are freedom fighters.
And as I've mentioned, we've seen firmer evidence of what many of us knew along – that Douma was a staged fabrication as a pretext for air-strikes and dangerously escalating the Syrian war. The likes of Eliot Higgins and others in the media, colluding in the cover-up of mass murder which likely facilitated this event. And for those honest journalists and experts who bring the truth of these staged events to us, smears will no doubt continue .
Higgins and others in the media who lie, misinform or remain silent are no better than those shooting civilians from helicopters or starting these wars in the first place. In fact, they have killed more and keep killing.
This modern-day Titus Oates, and others share a big responsibility for death and destruction in the Middle East and a dangerous new Cold War.
As I say, I think people are waking up to the distorted narratives and misdirections which have inflicted war on others. Now they need to take the next step and grasp the sheer enormity of the crimes and the risks of global conflict if we don't act.
So, how do we achieve this and get in a position of holding the criminals and war propagandists to account?
By confronting them directly and mercilessly. As Jeremy Corbyn should have done over the anti-Semitism hoax. Perhaps we should adopt some of the tactics they use against the truth-tellers and whistle-blowers. I don't mean by lies or smears. Maybe even ridiculing these people and their nonsense might have the effect of trivialising the crimes they have committed.
No, I think it is time for plainer, no-holds-barred language describing these people for the true evil they are – until the truth and label sticks.
We need to recognise more the seriousness of the crimes. This commentary from the usually measured Piers Robinson about the staged event in Douma reflects the true gravity of the situation in terms of the OPCW complicity .
4. The hijacking of OPCWThe cover-up of evidence that the Douma incident was staged is not merely misconduct. As the staging of the Douma incident entailed mass murder of civilians, those in OPCW who have suppressed the evidence of staging are, unwittingly or otherwise, colluding with mass murder."
We need to now apply this strong language to all crimes committed, be it from the soldiers on the ground, the governments starting these wars or supplying terrorists or the media which promote mass murder through their lies, distortions and silence when presented with the true facts.
We need to go on the offensive and call out the criminals and spell out in no uncertain terms what we are dealing with. With the evidence and fact-based analogies or arguments we publish we should be using more commentary such as 'mass murderer', 'traitor' or 'terrorist propagandist'.
This is particularly important in light of events in recent days. The assassination of General Qasem Soleimani has been normalised in both mainstream and on social media. The people legitimising state-sponsored murder in offices thousands of miles away from Iran, woefully ignorant of the potential of this causing a chain of events which could visit our door soon.
Above all, we should specifically name and shame the individuals promoting war. This needs to be relentless. The official war narratives which have crumbled so far are ample evidence of wrongdoing on a vast scale. So, we can be confident in doing this with the truth firmly on our side.
Filed under: Douma "Chemical Attack" , historical perspectives , latest , Syria Tagged with: Bellingcat. Eliot Higgins , douma chemical attack , Glorious Revelution , Kevin Smith , OPCW , Peter Hitchens , Titus Oates can you spare $1.00 a month to support independent mediaOffGuardian does not accept advertising or sponsored content. We have no large financial backers. We are not funded by any government or NGO. Donations from our readers is our only means of income. Even the smallest amount of support is hugely appreciated.
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wardropper ,
No, I think it is time for plainer, no-holds-barred language describing these people for the true evil they are – until the truth and label sticks.
Yes indeed.
I was, however, reminded today of the huge mountain we yet have to climb before it can be normal again NOT to be corrupt and wicked. The scenario was a session of acrimony in a US Senate chamber, and according to the NYTimes, "Tensions grew so raw after midnight that Chief Justice Roberts cut in just before 1 a.m. to admonish the managers and the president's lawyers to "remember where they are" and return to "civil discourse." "
"Remembering where you are", when dealing with Titus Oates and other vulgar frauds is perhaps not entirely appropriate ?wardropper ,
Apologies, I forgot to set the first sentence in quotesThom ,
Hitchens may be on the level on this particular issue but it is part of a wider deception where Hitchens poses as a friend to critical thinkers and then tells them they are helpless and/or can do nothing about it. If he really had journalistic integrity he wouldn't be taking a salary from the Mail on Sunday, a newspaper that relentlessly lied for the Tories at the last election, with the help of the itelligence agencies.Koba ,
As good as Hitchens has done here he's still at heart a Trotskyist he lives a good split and a toothless display just like the Trotskyists he used to side with. His brother went from Trotskyist to soft neocon and peter went from Trotskyist to an ardent Christian Conservative in a veeeeeery short space of time. Plus there dad was deeeeep in with the establishment and his mum Jewish. So .Richard Le Sarc ,
what?Gall ,
Bellingcrap is just another scam like Dupes (Snopes) and Politi"facts". All of them are funded by the Atlantic Council and the CIA front National Endowment for "Democracy". Their cover as an "independent objective fact checking service" is about as transparent as Saran Wrap.tonyopmoc ,
I really liked this when I read it this morning, before the grandkids came round, but I thought some of the comments a bit severe..I mean this photo is of some 40 year old kid, who lives in Leicester, and his Mum/wife/sister or whatever works in the local Post Office .
I personally had never heard of Brown Noses, and I have never personnally succeeded in getting anything I wrote, posted above our below the line, since The Manchester Guardian moved from Manchester to London, and whilst I do love reading some of the posters' comments well look face it.
Even though Rhys probabaly doesn't like what this kid writes – Elliot is it? he is hardly going to come round with a chainsaw, to cut his head off is he? He probably never even thought of it.
He did say he is small fry, and he probably is still a virgin (been brainwashed – so he actually belives the model doll is better. What has he got to compare it to?)
So I can't blame any of them.
There are alternatives as well as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and all those Dating Websites, when almost everything you write gets deleted.
Just go down the local pub when there is a good band on. Even I can pull there, but I am better looking than both Rhys and Elliot
I Like Girls.
I am a man. It's Normal
Just keep fit dancing and smiling, and you will be O.K.
Tony
paul ,
The prime importance of these endless hoaxes, smears, lies, fabrications and official approved conspiracy theories, lies not so much in the events themselves as what it says about the nature of the people who rule over us and their courtiers and handmaidens in the MSM.It would take a whole forest of trees merely to catalogue all their lies over the years, whether it's the Iraq Incubator Babies, the black Viagra fuelled rape gangs in Libya, the Syrian Gas Hoaxes, 9/11, Iraq's WMD, Iran's non existent nuclear weapons, Skripal, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, or the communist spy/ terrorist/ anti semitic smear campaign against Corbyn. And that is only the tip of a very large iceberg. You could go back further to Gladio, Operation Northwoods, Tonkin Gulf, the "Holocaust", Zinoviev Letter, Bayonetted Belgian Babies, Raped Belgian Nuns, Human Bodies Made Into Soap. The list is endless.
We have been lied to consistently for years, decades, and generations. And these lies have been peddled endlessly in the MSM, no matter how ludicrous and transparently false they are. In the absence of direct personal knowledge or very convincing evidence to the contrary, you just have to assume that everything we have ever been told, are being told, and will be told, and most of the accepted historical record, are simply false. Nothing, nothing at all, can ever be taken at face value.
And those who rule over us and who are responsible for these lies are psychopathic subhuman filth devoid of any moral values or any redeeming features whatsoever. They are a thousand times worse than the worst mass murderers or child killers who have ever been through our courts. The Moors Murderers, the Ted Bundys, the Jeffrey Dahmers, were seriously damaged individuals who killed a handful of victims. And they did their own dirty work. The Blairs, the Campbells, the Straws, the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, the Allbrights, the Macrons, the Camerons, the Netanyahus, the Trumps, have the blood of millions on their hands. They and their wire pullers are responsible for the death, starvation and misery of tens and hundreds of millions.
So when Blair, or Johnson, or Trump or whoever is interviewed on television, you have to remember that individual is a thousand times worse than the Moors Murderers, and we would actually be that much better off if Brady or Hindley were ruling over us. They deserve no respect or deference or legitimacy. They plot the murders of millions and the starvation of tens of millions – and laugh and giggle as they do so. They should be simply recognised for what they awe – psychopathic subhuman filth.
I do agree with you Paul and of course all you say is true. One of the main problems is that these people have the power to build artificial constructs sufficient for the masses to believe and perpetuated through their bought and paid for MSM whose journalists are mere foot soldiers and wish only to get their pay checks. They have no reason to question the lies and distortions pedaled to them by TPTB – they merely repeat the false narrative:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" – Upton SinclairAnd we, the great 99%, have little power to change things except within our local network. We can shout all we like on social media but it changes nothing until the great crisis reoccurs and perhaps the masses will rise and demand a just and equitable system. Until that day perhaps this little video will provide an understanding:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/rStL7niR7gs?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Roberto ,
The business of the MSM throughout the ages has been to traumatise or at least just generally worry the public with headlines focused on fear, envy, anger, revenge, and hate. Include all five in your story and you're well on the way to a Pulitzer Prize, bestowed on the profession by one of the great muckrakers of all time. It's not incidental that there have been a disturbing number of winners that have turned out to be dissembling frauds. Add to this the fact that 'journalism' training apparently does not teach entrants to distinguish the difference between opinion and news, and the die is cast: propaganda as news.Dungroanin ,
Here is what BellEndScat supporting Rusbridger is moaning about."For some years now – largely unreported – two chancery court judges have been dealing with literally hundreds of cases of phone hacking against MGN Ltd and News Group, the owners, respectively, of the Daily Mirror and the Sun (as well as the defunct News of the World).
The two publishers are, between them, forking out eye-watering sums to avoid any cases going to trial in open court. Because the newspaper industry lobbied so forcefully to scrap the second part of the Leveson inquiry, which had been due to shine a light on such matters, we can only surmise what is going on.But there are clues. Mirror Group (now Reach) had by July 2018 set aside more than £70m to settle phone-hacking claims without risking any of them getting to court. The BBC reported last year that the Murdoch titles had paid out an astonishing £400m in damages and calculated that the total bill for the two companies could eventually reach £1bn."
On the overall perfidious msm he quips:
"Because the newspaper industry lobbied so forcefully to scrap the second part of the Leveson inquiry, which had been due to shine a light on such matters, we can only surmise what is going on."
-- --
Completely ignoring that the Integrity Iniative infested Guardian ITSELF objected to the recommendation of Levesons thoroughly public Inquiry and opposition to a independent press regulator!
It would have been a building block and certainly stopped most of the continued press misbehaviour over the last 5 years.
Neither Fish nor Fowl Mr Rusbridger. More sinner that saint, more like.
Hugh O'Neill ,
Going to the heart of what Bellingcat, MI6 and CIA is Pompeo's: "We lie, we cheat, we steal." These evil filth are devoid of any moral code and have no respect whatsoever for the laws of God or Man. At which point, consider Moses' (how apt) Ten Commandments. There among them is: "Thou shalt not bear false witness". Think what you will of these Ten, but as a moral code, they were quite useful.Richard Le Sarc ,
Would that all these scum could share the fate of their progenitor, Streicher-without the ' necktie party'. Life at hard labour would do the lot of them much good.Brianeg ,
I looked at the Veterans Today link and it all sounds very plausible'However in today's world nothing makes sense especially when the questions arise.
Is it possible to change the signal of an aircrafts transponder remotely. Can the target acquisition radar on the missile be spoofed remotely. Just why did the flight control officer sanction the take off of this plane in the middle of a war unless they were party to the whole thing.. Just what were the six Israeli F-35 jets doing flying close to the Iranian border?
Okay there is a lot of smoke but just where is the fire.
Just as interesting is that none of the twelve Iranian missiles was intercepted and there are rumours that the Iranians were able to take out of action American air defences.
I am sure that like with Douma when the majority of NATO missiles were intercepted by missiles that were decades old, you wonder what might happen when most of the middle east is covered by the S-300 and later versions.
This is a story that has got a long way to run and we might never hear the ending.
Dungroanin ,
Facts are inconvenient.
Many planes took off.
This one was delayed by the pilot 'to remove overloading'.
Reports of Cruise missiles heading in.Mucho ,
For the best info on this, go to Brendon O' Connell's channel and watch 1 to 3 and number 22. You will get answers there.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYaLxbD7Rix3p1rdGY3IMjg?pbjreload=10Also go to the Antedote and listen to Greg and Jeremy's latest offering.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMf1qGR8km1c8vg_dtpzzVQDungroanin ,
It sounds a bit MAGA.The thing about 'chips' is they could easily be identified by putting them in a black box and watching what they do using a chip which only does that!
The whole bs about it's THEM not US crap falls away. Just need some open source simple 'custodian' chip manufacturer to make that available. If it can be made a 'gate keeper' than we are all safe.
Mucho ,
"It sounds a bit MAGA. "
After this, I will never, ever read any of your comments ever again. Get lost!Mucho ,
You talk so much crap. Please, keep it to yourselfDungroanin ,
I ain't saying that is your opinion am I?The bit I watched was him being gung-ho about getting back 'control of microprocessors' !!!
There is a big difference between designing chips and 'manufacturing' facilities'.
Have you never wondered why most actual building of small electrical component equipment takes place in Asia?
I don't care wherher you read my comments- i am free to post what I want on whatevet article and whoevers comment. And stick to facts.
Mucho ,
"The bit I watched ".
Honestly, I am so tired of people who comment on things they know nothing about. Everything you say is wrong, because you are speaking from a position of total ignorance, because you haven't watched the films.
Watch 1 to 3. Watch 22 and 23 ALL THE WAY THROUGH, not skimming. Then comment. Every inaccurate comment you make is covered in detail. Honestly it's no wonder we're so fucked.From 2005 after one google search, time spent on this, 10 seconds:
"While Yona was developed in partnership with one of Intel's California centers, the 65nm microprocessor product is the first to be developed in its entirety, both the architecture and strategy, by Intel engineers at its Israel plants in Haifa and Yakum. "
https://www.israel21c.org/intels-new-chip-design-developed-in-israel/You know zilch, you understand nothing, you make assumptions, you don't watch or read the material, and then in your total ignorance, you spew your feeble thoughts on this forum. Moron
Mucho ,
You define the phrase "ignorant Brit"Dungroanin ,
Mucho since you FAILED instantly in your promise to ignore me – i will respond to your toy throwing out of the parambulator.First just telling people to WATCH something without explaining what the salient point to be learnt – is not the way to influence or educate.
I prefer reading an argument- I definitely do not spend hours watching TV or listening to propaganda by msm / indy or 'shock jocks' – that last was the personality I saw and didn't feel the need to hear anymore as I don't when Nigel Farage and his ilk do on the radio here.
If you want to inform or prove something to me or anyone else kindly post a link to a written piece.
Second, chips are designed eveywhere there is such competence. Chip manufacturing mainly improved theough research in top universities.
The UK was a lead chip designer too.None of that means the Israelis haven't monopolosed tech and own many patents. The fact is the Israelis ARE part of the 5+1 eyed world Empire – they are the plus one. Snowdens whistleblowing makes absolutely clear that the +1 gets a higher clearance than the +4.
That's as nice as I am prepared to be, so finally, that last paragraph is what is known as PROJECTION. Look it up and learn that it comes from your fav bogeymen brainfuckers.
That is some serious self-hate you have going on – work on it.
Take it easy ok?
Mucho ,
Number 23 is totally relevant too, going deep into chips, backdooring and kill switch usageKoba ,
So the mocking of maga is what set you off? Fuck maga and it's idiot supporters great nations don't slaughter civilians for capitalbevin ,
Has this link been cited?
https://thewallwillfall.org/2020/01/19/important-douma-opcw-update-from-prof-piers-robinson/norman wisdom ,
chris morris is very funny has a fine body of twisted comedick works
for all his charm his role is too destroy society degrade
he is khazar after allsacha baron co hen the names speaks for itself an empty cruel tool
never trust a coen cohen khan or cowen or co they cookooeliot mcfuck higgins is not oirish
he is not certainly related to snooker loopy or is it darts i cannot remember hero alex higgins.eliot"s dad is rita katz from site intel group amaq news
his mom barbera lerner spector
or is it vice versa
versa vice
whatever
shirley youget my the friends of the oirish israel drift
so to speaks
or sum suchMucho ,
Brilliant, insightful, logical hypothesis of the recent plane downing over Iran by Jeremy Rothe Kushel. Ignore the video, this is about the written article.The Prime Suspect in Ukrainian PS752 Shootdown: Israel's Unit 8200
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/01/10/ps752/Mucho ,
For further info about Israeli tech domination, what it is, where it comes from and the implications of this, go to Brendon O Connell's YT channel. Number 22 in his list is very important.Mucho ,
Jeremy Rothe-Kushel is a very important member of the truth community, in no small part due to the fact that he is an Ashkenazi Jew. My personal belief is that in the end, the Jewish community will play a pivotal role in weeding out the evil that rules over us. I wish we didn't have these labels, that we could have true freedom to play our chosen role in our God created realm, but at this stage in the game, we're stuck with our divide and rule labels and systems of control.
Jeremy's style is to the point, he has great depth of knowledge, an encyclopedic knowledge of his field and is a highly astute commentator. He presents a lot of complex information in fairly easy to digest chunks with his co-host, Greg McCarron, on their show "The Antedote" on YT, as well as doing a lot of guerilla style activism in US politics. Highly recommended.norman wisdom ,
i met elliot many years ago
the chap on the 8 year old lap top above
we called him fat face down the synagogue ohh how we laughed
he laughed as well everytime someone said it
such fun
are rabbi one day organised a trip and lecture tour of chatham house the belly of the beast.
we learnt all about how tough regime change was and how difficult it is to do on a bbc size budget.what we learnt was that having are people everywhere really helped
scripted up to speed influencer roles in media in public on track on page working cog like.
a kind of khazar collective non semites only for security reasons of course.
we could work from a very low pound dollar and shekels base and still be very effective.never under estimate the benjamins or elliots it is folks like this that are the real hero of the oded yinon
yes sir
already my life
fat face eliot boy done goodand like all khazar he hates the sephardim jewisher and the unclean arab which is shirley a bonus is it not
George Mc ,
First off, if folks haven't a clue who Harold Shipman is, you're not going to get far with Titus Oats. At the most they might think it's a character from Gormenghast.Second, I initially misread the article and thought that the figure from the 17th century actually WAS Higgins of Bellingcat. And if that seems an absurd assumption to make, even temporarily, it doesn't seem much more absurd than some of the stuff he says e.g.
I had no knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo.
The point has been raised that there are psyops perpetrated with a malicious sense of humour as if to say, "These suckers will swallow anything". Higgins with his "education" from Arnold and Rambo may be an example of one of those jokes.
Third, and to end on an optimistic note, I like the 17th century sentencing and recommend we bring it back:
and he was whipped and placed in the pillory.
Dungroanin ,
Admin – a suggestion on keeping recent articles available from the top of the page.Problem: As you add new aricles at top left the ones on the very right drop away! Almost as if being binned into a memory hole.
Solution: allow a scroll at the right hand edge so that these older links are easily available to readers. Only a minor coding change without any change to your front page.
Tallis Marsh ,
I concur! I'm sure many of us will appreciate a scroll on the right hand edge so we can access the older articles. Thanks in advance, OffG!Oliver ,
HM Armed Forces operations in Syria follow the doctrine of Major General Sir Frank Kitson who learnt his stuff in Kenya in the 1950s. Murder, torture, rape the staples of the British military's modern terrorist ability. NATO doctrine too.Joe ,
https://www.youtube.com/embed/0oLfNr4JjeI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
BigB ,
This is an important article: one of the few that dares to express that Douma et al are not mere false flags they a darkly psychotic form of 'snuff propaganda porn' (including the recycling and rearanging of 'props' that were until recently animate human souls with a lifetime of possibility abnegated for ideology). The Working Group on Syria is part of a small counter-narrative subset – along with Sister Agnes Mariam, Vanessa Beeley, RT (on occasion), UK Column, The Indicter, Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli – who are willing to state plainly that this is child murder. Now I wholeheartedly commend Kevin that we should name and shame the culprits and their supporters."No, I think it is time for plainer, no-holds-barred language describing these people for the true evil they are – until the truth and label sticks."
I had a similar epiphany in early 2016. The barbaric of murder of starved and thirsty children at Rashidin – Syrian innocence lured by much needed sweets and drinks only to be blown apart in front of their mothers. Anyone who supports the White Helmets terrorist construct and their NATO-proxy child-murderers needs to be exposed. But what if that trail of exposure leads back to the leader of the Labour party: who had just personally endorsed the charity funding of the White Helmets? And continued to support the Jo Cox Foundation of Syrian humanitarian bombers and R2P interventionists? Which itself is a front for the dark money web of 'philanthrocapitalism' that is the shadow support network for regime change crimes against humanity. This is when righteous indignation meets the dark wall of silence around the social construction of reality. Especially if you put Jeremy Corbyn in the frame.
What this means is the ability to frame dark actors for the true evil they are has to be a two-way flow. Meaning is created across networks, not just by naming but by naming and agreeing across narrative communities. Again, this is not abstruse: it is social reality. Social reality is not reality: it is a consensual constructivism. Significant numbers of others have to be in a position of consensual agreement in order to challenge the dominant narrative(s). So I echo the sentiment that many can see that the dominant narrative – especially concerning Syria – is deeply flawed. But they are as yet unwilling to admit that the depth of the flaw is in fact a tear in social reality that cannot be easily healed.
This is the aspect of social reality called 'universe maintenance'. Doxa is the reality constructing belief set – the episteme of interacting beliefs. The narrative has two main aspects: ortho-doxa and hetero-doxa – the orthodox maintaining and heterodox subverting discourses. In order to truly subvert the hegemonic orthodoxy – there has to be a social moment of criticality when the heterodox is no longer deniable. To reach that point: the intrajecting true has to be believable to the hegemonic orthodoxy. Now we have a third mode: para-doxa when the true 'state of affairs' is not believable – it is easily rejected as paradoxical to the reigning consensus covenant of the true. This is universe maintaining: whereby the the totality of the dominant discourse actually subsumes or repels any paradox as a half-truth or ameliorated, disarmed less-than-true ('conspiracy theory'). This is known as 'recuperation'. Anything that meets the dominant discourse has to be explained in the terms of the dominant discourse accommodative and recommending itself to the dominant discourse. Which then becomes a part of the dominant universe of discourse.
A moment of the true is like a barb to a bubble. It has to be contained and wrapped in narrative that describes and explains it into a consumable form. The full realisation of the propagandic child murder in Syria – tacitly supported by the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn in particular – would destroy the symbolic universe of social reality. Of which it is my personal experience no one really wants to do. The correlations, direct and indirect links, and universally maintained orthodoxy of narrative discourse point to an accomodation. An explanation or multivariate set of explanations that problem shift and ascribe blame to imaginary actors. To deflect or defend the personal self. Because the personal self is independently situated outside the social sphere. Or is it?
Seeing the real event as it happens requires the perspicacity of social inclusion. We all create social reality together: with our without layers of dualising exclusion that protects us from the way the world really is. Who would vote to legitimise the supporters of NATO and the child-murderers of Syria? 31 million legitimising independent social actors just did. Do you suppose they did so in full knowledge that it is child-murder they were supporting? Or did they create universe maintaining accommodations to the truth? That is how powerful the screening discourses and legitimising orthodoxic narrative mythology is. It is not that it cannot be subverted: its just that calling out the true evil has to be heard in unison by large or social small assemblages willing to totally change everything – including themselves. In order to transition to a different social reality one that accommodates the truth. One which will look nothing like the social reality we choose to maintain as is.
Francis Lee ,
My first attempt didn't get through. Herewith second.It seems to me that the internal affairs of the Russian Federation, although they may have some impact on external geopolitical issues, are a matter for them. At the present time the relevant question regarding the RF is as follows: Question 1. Is Russia a revionist state intent on an expansionist foreign policy? Answer NO. But it is not going to tolerate NATO expansion into its own strategic zones, namely, Ukraine, Georgia and the North Caucusas. Question 2. Is the Anglo-Zionist empire in open of pursuit of a world empire intent on destroying any sovereign state – including first and foremost Russia – which stands in its way? Answer YES. This really is so blatant that anyone who is ethnically challenged should seek psychiatric help. In Polls conducted around the world the US is always cited as the most dangerous enemy of world peace, including in the US itself. Thus a small influential (unfortunately deranged) cabal based in the west has insinuated its way into the institutions of power and poses a real and present danger to world peace.
This being the case it is imperative to push all and any 'normal' western governments and shape public opinion and discourse (except the nut-jobs like Poland and the Baltics) into diplomacy. Wind down NATO just as the Warsaw Pact was wound down. that will do for starters. Of course the PTB in all the western institutions – the media (whores) the deep state, the Atlantic Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House the Arms merchants, the security services GCHQ, the CIA, Mossad and the rest will oppose this with all the power at their command. This is the present primary site of struggle, mainly propagandistic, cultural and economic, but with overtones of kinetic warfare.
Similar diplomatic initiatives must be directed at China. Yes, I know all about China's social credit policy, I don't particularly like the idea of 24 hour system of surveillance, and I wouldn't want to live there, but is already a virtual fait accompli in the west. Again it bears repeating that sovereign states should be left to their own devices. After all 'States have neither permanent friends of allies, only permanent interests. (Lord Palmerston, 19 century British Statesman). No more 'humanitarian interventions' thank you very much. How about Mind our own Business non-interventions.
I make no apologies for being a foreign policy realist – if that hasn't become apparent by this stage!
BigB ,
Francis:The Russian Federation is involved is strategic partnership with China in consolidating the Eurasian 'supercontinent' into the world island. One which is slowly being drawn together into a massive market covering 70% of the world's population, 75% of energy resources, and 70% of GDP. I'd call that expansionist, wouldn't you?
Market mechanisms and methodology are exponentially expansionist, extractivist, and extrapolative. Market propaganda is free and equal exchange coupled with mutual development through comparative advantage. Everyone benefits, right?
No: markets operate as vast surplus value extractors that only operate unequally to deliver maximum competitive advantage to the suprasovereign core. Surplus value valorises surplus capital which cannot be contained in a single domestic market: so it seeks to exploit underdeveloped foreign markets setting up dependencies and peripheries in the satellite states. Which keeps them maldeveloped. In short: Russia and China's wealth is not just their own.
Russia and China are globalisation now. Globalist exponential expansionism, extractivism, and extrapolation is the repression of humanism and destruction of the biosphere. It can't stop growing in the cancer stage of hyper-capitalism. We are currently consuming every resource at a material throughput increase of 3% per annum year on year. That's a 23 year exponential doubling of material resources. And a 46 year doubling of the doubling. How long before globalisation uses everything? How far into the race to the bottom will the market collapse?
It would be really nice to return to a Westphalian System of non-expansionist, non-extractivist sovereign nation states. It is just not even plausible under market mechanisms of extraction. There can be no material decoupling and development remains contingent on an impossible infinity: because development remains parallel and assymetrically maintained. And all major resources are depleting exponentially too. Including the nominative renewable and sustainable ones.
Degrowth; self-sufficiency; localised 'anti-fragility', steady-state; asymmetric development of the marginalised and the peripheralised; regenerative agroecological agriculture; human development not abstract market development; are just some of the pre-requisites of a return to sovereign states. Russia 'sovereigntist' globalisation is the expansionist opposite to that. The RF is part of the biggest market in the world that hoovers up as much surplus value as it can before sending a large tranche of it to London. As much as $25bn a year in capital flight into the offshore nexus of secrecy jurisdictions. It's a globalist expansionist market mechanism that hoovers all vitality out of the life-ground. That: I call expansionist and imperialist of which Russia and China are now the major part.
Francis Lee ,
"The Russian Federation is involved is strategic partnership with China in consolidating the Eurasian 'supercontinent' into the world island. One which is slowly being drawn together into a massive market covering 70% of the world's population, 75% of energy resources, and 70% of GDP. I'd call that expansionist, wouldn't you?"No, I wouldn't actually. Building roads, rail connections and other trade routes doesn't strike me as imperial expansion. No-one is being forced to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) or into reconfiguring their internal political and economic structures, as the US does in Latin America or as the British did in India and Southern Africa. (East India Company and the British British South Africa Chartered Company). The SCO is a voluntary arrangement. Uzbekistan for example has decided not to join the central Asian Eurasian Economic Union – well that's its prerogative. No-one is going to send any gun-boats to force them. (I am aware that Uzbekistan is a landlocked country, but I was talking figuratively.)
The EEU's genesis has along with the SCO and BRI has been forced upon the China/Russia axis as part of an emerging counter-hegemonic alliance against the US's imperial aggrandisement with its kowtowing vassals in tow. Russia has no claims on any of its neighbours since it is already endowed with ample land and mineral deposits. China is a key part of this essentially geopolitical bloc quite simply because the US imperial hegemon is determined to stop China's development by all means necessary including the dragooning of contiguous military bases in US proxy states around China's maritime borders.
A distinction should be made between rampant imperialism of the Anglo-zi0nist empire, and the response of an increasingly bloc of states who find both their sovereignty and even their existence threatened by the imperial juggernaut. What exactly did you expect them to do given the hostility and destructive intent of the Empire? Defence against imperialism is not imperialism. The defence of autonomy and sovereignty of international society and the creation of an anti-hegemonic have the potential to finally create a transformative new world order (and goodness knows we need one) announced at the end of the Cold War in 1991. This ambition finds support not only in Russia and China but in other countries ready to align with them, but also in many western countries. I obviously need to put the question again. Who is and who is not the greatest threat to world peace? Surely to pose the question is to answer it.
Dungroanin ,
Agree Francis.
There is a move to suggest that the Old Empire retains a 'maritime' world and the SCO confines itself to the Eurasian land mass.
Dream on.
The Empire is DEAD. Long live the new Empire!BigB ,
Who is the greatest threat to world peace and to the world itself? We are. The global carbon consumption/pollution bourgeoisie. It is the global expansionist mindset that is increasing its demands for growth – as the only solution to social problems, maldevelopment, and maldistribution caused by excessive growth. Supply has to be met by exponentially expanding markets. Whether this is voluntaristic or coerced makes very little difference to the market cancer subsuming the globe. Benign or aggressive forms of cancer are still cancer. And the net effect is the same.Russia and China – the 'East' – uphold exactly the same corporate model of global governance that the 'West' does. Which has been made clear in every joint communique – especially BRICS communiques. I have made the case – following Professor Patrick Bond – that BRICS in particular (a literal Goldman Sachs globalist marketing ploy) – are sub-imperial, not anti-imperial. All their major institutions are dollar denominated for loans; BRI finance is in dollars; BRICS re-capitalised the IMF; Contingency Reserve Arrangements come with an IMF neoliberalising structural adjustment policy; etc. It is the same model East and West. One is merely the pseudo-benign extension of the other. The alternative to neoliberal globalisation is neoliberal globalisation. This became radiantly clear at SPIEF 2019: TINA there is no alternative.
The perceived alternative is the reproduction of neoliberalism – which has long been think-tanked and obvious – and its transformation from 'globalisation 3.0' to 'globalisation 4.0' trade in goods and services, with the emphasis on a transition to high-speed interconnectivity and decoupled service economies. Something like the Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway (TASIM)? With a sovereigntist and social inclusivity compact. So the neoliberal leopard can change its spots?
No. Whilst your argument is sound and well constructed: it is reliant on the early 20th century Leninist definition of 'imperialism' as a purely militarist phenomena. Imperialism mutated since then – from military to financial (which are not necessarily exclusive sets) – and is set to metastasise again into 'green imperialism' of man over man (and it is an andrarchic principle) and man (culture) over nature. Here your argument falls down to an ecological and bio-materialist critique. Cancer is extractivist and expansionist wherever it grows.
Russia is the fourth largest primary energy consumer on the planet. Disregarding hydro – which is not truly ecological – it has a 1% renewable penetration. It is a hydrocarbon behemoth set to grow the only way it knows how – consuming more hydrocarbons. They cannot go 'green': no one can. And a with a global ecological footprint of 3.3 planets per capita, per annum, this is not sustainable. Now or ever.
So a distinction needs to be made between the old rampant neoliberal globalisation model (3.0) – the Anglo-Zionist imperialist model – and the emergent neoliberal globalisation model (4.0) of Russia/China's rampant ecological imperialism? And a further distinction needs to be made about what humanity has to do to survive this distinction between aggressive and quasi-benign cancer forms. Because we will be just as dead, just as quick if we cannot even identify the underlying cancer we are all suffering from.
Koba ,
Big B sit down ultra! China and Russia rent empires and have no desire to be! If you're a left winger you're another poor example of one and more than likely a TrotskyistRichard Le Sarc ,
Love the nickname, Josef.Louis Proyect ,
This is because if a chemical attack did not take place and Assad was not responsible it seems highly likely that the civilians including children were murdered to facilitate a fabrication.And were our own intelligence agencies involved in a staged event, considering the refusal to even establish the basic facts in the days following?
-- -
This is the sort of conclusion you must come to if you are into Islamophobic conspiracy theories. The notion that this kind of slaughter took place to "facilitate" a false flag is analogous to the 9/11 conspiracism that was on display here a while back and that manifested itself through the inclusion of NYU 9/11 Truther Mark Crispin Miller on Tim Hayward's Assadist propaganda team.
Sad, really.
Harry Stotle ,
Go on Louis, remind us about the 'terrorist passport' miraculously found at the foot of the collapsed tower with a page coveniently left open displaying a 'Tora Bora' stamp – I kove that bit.I mean who, apart from half the worlds scientific community is not totally convinced by such compelling evidence, especially when allied to the re-writing of the laws of physics in order to rationlise the ludicrous 2 planes 3 towers conspiracy theory?
Next you'll be telling us it was necessary for the US to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for reasons few American'srecall beyond the neocon fantasy contructed on 11th Septemember, 2001.
Dave Hansell ,
It's clear to a blind man on a galloping horse from this comment of yours Mr Proyect that concepts such as objective evidence, logical and rational deduction, the scientific method etc are beyond your ken.Faced with the facts of a collapsing narrative of obvious bullshit and lies you have bought into, which you are incapable of facing up to, it is unsurprising that you are reduced to such puerile school playground level deflections.
So come on, try getting out of the gutter and upping your game. Because this fare is nothing short of sad and pathetic.
We know from the evidence of those who actually know their arse from their elbow on these matters that the claims of an attack using chemical weapons on this site are unsustainable.
Which leaves the issue of the bodies at the site. Given they did not lose their lives as a result of the unscientific bullshit explanation you desperately and clearly want to be the case the question is how did those civilians lose their lives? How did their corpses find their way to that location?
Did Assad and his "regime" murder them and move the bodies to that site (over which they had no control) in order to create a false flag event to get themselves falsely accused of an NBC attack Louis? Because that's the only reasonable and rational deduction one can imply from your argument and approach.
It is certainly more reasoned, rational and in keeping with the scientific method (you might want to try it sometime) to surmise that the bodies on site, having not been the result of the claimed and unsustainable narrative you have naively committed to, either died on site from some other cause or were brought to the site for the purpose of creating your fantasy narrative.
In the latter case it is further a matter of rational and reasoned deduction that such an occurrence could only be carried it in circumstances in which whoever carried it out had actual, effective and physical control of a geographical location and area situated within a wider conflict zone.
Again, it remains a piece of factual reality that this location was not under the control of the Assad 'regime.' Not least because otherwise there would be no logical or rational military reason for the de facto Syrian Government and it's armed forces to waste resources attacking it.
Unless of course he buys I to the conspiracy theory and hat they somehow organised a false flag implicating themselves?
I'm sure everyone else here in the reality based community is waiting with bated breath for you to 'explain' how they did this Louis.
I know I am. I could do with a good laugh.
George Mc ,
This is the sort of conclusion you must come to if you are into Islamophobic conspiracy theories.
Umm – the assumption that Muslims DIDN'T do it is "Islamophobic"? Even on your own terms you're not making much sense these days, Louis.
lundiel ,
There was little doubt that British special forces were captured in Eastern Ghouta when the SAA prevented an all out attack on Damascus. European precursors and British munitions were uncovered along with factories within the tunnel complex, itself a product of western engineering and slave labour. This was no propaganda, evidence was collected, statements were taken and everything was documented. Douma was a direct follow-on from that failure and yet, you refuse the evidence piling up, but accept testimony of journalists based in Jordan and Turkey? The "conspiracy" is wholly yours Louis and you are guilty of malicious intent, false representation and pretending to be a "Marxist" when you are a Zionist neocon.lundiel ,
Hi I'm Louis an unrepentant Marxist and I willfully refuse to use block-quotes.Richard Le Sarc ,
More proyectile vomitus in defence of child-murdering salafist vermin. How low can this creature descend?Louis Proyect ,
Richard, such abusive language only indicates your inability to discuss the matter at hand. In general, a detached sarcasm works much better in polemics. You need to read Lenin to see how it is done. I should add that I am referring to V.I. Lenin, not John Lenin who wrote "Crippled Inside".Richard Le Sarc ,
You defended the salafist butchers with lies, proyectile-do you not even comprehend your own sewage? Or did someone else write it and you just appended your paw-print?Dave Hansell ,
Apologies here. There is an open goal and the ball needs to be put in the back of the net:Seems that Louis here is well ahead of the curve in terms of Fukuyama's well known observation about the end of history.
For Louise history, in terms of the progress and development of human knowledge, stopped around a century ago with whatever Lenin wrote.
But that's what happens to those who only read one book.
Sad really.
Dungroanin ,
You come across more as Yaxley – Lenin mr Tommy Proyect – but he is a MI5 stooge unlike you cough cough.Koba ,
Lenin hates Trotsky! Trotsky was a power mad maniac who wanted a permanent war state to somehow spread his specific brand of "ahem" socialism, which won't win you friends! "Hi yeah sorry we killed your family in a war we started to save you but yippee Trotsky is now in charge so stop complaining"! You're just a bunch of liars the trotsMaggie ,
learn to use the internet which has the information you need to learn the truth:Acting out a chemical attack?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/o63VnLJpwuc?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Jimmy Dore hits the nail every time!!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/FLRQSfSKoJo?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Didn't you just love George Carlin, identifies just what the problem is with dicks like Proyect.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/KLODGhEyLvk?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Maggie ,
Here's another Jimmy Dore Vid from 2017
Watch and learn
https://www.youtube.com/embed/MnSAB4qeDug?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Koba ,
Maggie don't take jimmy bore as some truth teller he's a bland progressive with revolutionary slogans like proyect! He also has a habit of equating Stalin with Hitler in that god awful nasal accent of hisRichard Le Sarc ,
Thems White Helmets is always so neat and tidy. Their mammies must have insisted that they always look their best.paul ,
The British taxpayer funded head choppers and throat slitters in Syria routinely committed massacres and filmed their victims. The resulting footage was passed off by tame media hacks as "evidence" of regime atrocities.Koba ,
Death to the Trotskyists
Fuck proyect your name calling says it all!
Islamophobes indeed?! What an idiotHarry Stotle ,
The alternative media, and a smattering of truth tellers are locked in an asymmetrical information-war with the establishment – with an all too obvious 'David & Goliath' sort of dynamic underlying it.The question asked at the heart of this article is how to break the vice like grip information managers hold over various geopolitical narratives, referencing events in Douma in particular.
Alnost reflexively 9/11 comes to mind – a fairly unambiguous example of mass murder for which the official account does not withstand even the most cursory form of scrutiny.
Professionals even went so far as to purger themselves while the investigating committee admitted they were 'set up to fail' (to quote its chairman).Yet the public, instead of shredding Bush, limb from limb (for the lies that were told) rolled onto their back while the neoncons tickled their collective belly as you might do with a particulalrly adorable puppy,
So if we can't even get to the bottom of events in the middle of New York what realistic chance of doing so in a hostile war zone like Douma?On balance racism, together with other forms of collective loathing is the most likely reason why this unsatisfactory state of affairs is unlikely to change.
A collective 'them and us' mindset makes it far easier for information managers to manipulate a visceral hatred and fear of 'the other'.
Today it is Qasem Soleimani westerners are taugyt to despise, yesterday it was Bashar al-Assad, before that Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Nicolás Maduro . the list just goes on and on.
Information managers simply wind the public up so that collective anger can be directed toward governments or individuals they are trying to bring down – recent history tells us that the public are largely oblivious to this process, so thus never learn from their mistakes.Perhaps one thing western leaders, and the US in particular can always rely on, is the ease with which the public can be persuaded to believe that certain bogeymen pose a grave threat to 'our way of life' while failing to notice that it is in fact our own leaders who are carrying out the worst atrocities.
harry law ,
Harry Stotle, .."Perhaps one thing western leaders, and the US in particular can always rely on, is the ease with which the public can be persuaded to believe that certain bogeymen pose a grave threat to 'our way of life'. That's true Hermann Goring had it about right with this quote
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
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Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Trailer Trash , Jan 23 2020 18:30 utc | 44>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?
Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.
One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially change the direction of US policy.
But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming into view...
Per/Norway , Jan 23 2020 19:31 utc | 62
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me.Piotr Berman , Jan 23 2020 20:19 utc | 82
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE to believe A politician will/can change anything and give your consent to war criminals and traitors?
NO person(s) WILL EVER get to the top in imperial/vassal state politics without being on the rentier class side, the cognitive dissonans in voting for known liars, war criminals and traitors would kill me or fry my brain. TINA is a lie and "she" is a real bitch that deserves to be thrown on the dump off history, YOUR vote is YOUR consent to murder, theft and treason.
DONT be a rentier class enabler STOP voting and start making your local communities better and independent instead.Per
NorwayThe amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me. <- NorwayOf course, There Is Another Way, for example, kvetching. We can boldly show that we are upset, and pessimistic. One upset pessimists reach critical mass we will think about some actions.
But being upset and pessimistic does fully justify inactivity. In particular, given the nature of social interaction networks, with spokes and hubs, dominating the network requires the control of relatively few nodes. The nature of democracy always allows for leverage takeover, starting from dominating within small to the entire nation in few steps. As it was nicely explained by Prof. Overton, there is a window of positions that the vast majority regards as reasonable, non-radical etc. One reason that powers to be invest so much energy vilifying dissenters, Russian assets of late, is to keep them outside the Overton window.
Having a candidate elected that the curators of Overton window hate definitely shakes the situation with the potential of shifting the window. There were some positive symptoms after Trump was elected, but negatives prevail. "Why not we just kill him" idea entered the window, together with "we took their oil because we have guts and common sense".
From that point of view, visibility of Tulsi and election of Sanders will solve some problems but most of all, it will make big changes in Overton window.
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Jan 21, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
Cassiodorus on Mon, 01/20/2020 - 11:44am Alexandra Petri tells us:
In a break from tradition, I am endorsing all 12 Democratic candidates.
Of course, this is a parody of the NYT's endorsement of Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren , trying to encourage the "who cares about policy we want an identity-politics win" vote. Petri's funniest moment is:
One of two things is wrong with America: Either the entire system is broken or is on the verge of breaking, and we need someone to bring about radical, structural change, or -- we don't need that at all! Which is it? Who can say? Certainly not me, and that is why I am telling you now which candidate to vote for.
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Jan 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Bryce Buchanan via The Burning Platform blog,
Many government officials with long entrenched power are unwilling to give up any of that power. In their minds, they have a right to control our lives as they see fit, with complete indifference to our wishes. To avoid rebellion, they need to hide this fact as much as possible. They want the citizens to believe the lie that we are a nation of laws with equal justice under the law. To advance this lie, they have staged many theatrical productions that they call "investigations". They try to give us the impression that they want to expose the facts and punish wrongdoing.
Most of the big 'investigations' in the news in recent years have not been at all what they pretended to be. The sham investigations of Hillary's email, or the Clinton Foundation, or Weiner's laptop, or Uranium One, or Mueller's witch hunt, or Huber's big nothing, or the IG's whitewash, or the Schiff-Pelosi charades, have all been premeditated deceptions.
There are three types of investigations that call for different deceptions by the Deep State.
- The first type is the rare honest investigation . Examples would be the attempt to find the truth about Fast and Furious (Obama's gunrunning operation), or the IRS scandal (Obama's weaponizing of government). In response to real investigations, the criminals do two things lie and hide evidence. Key evidence, even if it is under subpoena, just disappears. In the IRS case, Lois Lerner's relevant email and the email of 6 others involved in the scheme was just "lost". The IRS "worked tirelessly" to find the email, but hard drives had been destroyed and back-up drives were missing, so the subpoenaed evidence could not be provided.
For the Deep State, hiding and destroying evidence of guilt is standard operating procedure. They simply report a "glitch" that destroyed the key evidence and that's the end of it. Or, they simply redact the portions of the record that would expose the truth. To my memory, no one ever suffers any consequences for this. Even now, Director Wray and others are tenaciously withholding evidence.
- The second type of 'investigation' is when the Deep State pretends to investigate the Deep State . In these 'investigations' the outcome is known in advance, but the script calls for pretending, sometimes for years, that it an honest investigation is underway.
There was nothing about the Hillary investigations that had anything to do with finding facts. The purpose from the beginning was exoneration. Key witnesses were given immunity and many were allowed to attend each other's interviews. There were no early morning swat team raids to gather evidence. Evidence was destroyed with no consequences.
When Anthony Weiner's laptop was found to contain over 340,000 Hillary emails in a file named "insurance", the FBI did not rejoice about finally getting the 'lost' email. No, they hid the discovery for weeks until a New York agent threatened to go public. Then, quite miraculously, Peter Strzok found a way to very quickly examine 340,000 messages and found that there was nothing at all that was incriminating. No rational person would believe that.
The dirty cops are so comfortable about getting away with lies like this that Huber can announce that he found no corruption, when it is readily apparent that he did not interview key witnesses . He even turned away whistleblowers who wanted to submit evidence. A real investigator, Charles Ortel, could have given Huber a long list of Clinton Foundation crimes . Like the Weiner laptop fake investigation, you don't find crimes if you don't really look for them.
The dirty cops are so confident in their ability to deceive the public that they just announced that the FISA court reforms will be managed by David Kris. Kris has been a defender of FBI misconduct and he attacked Devin Nunes for telling the truth about the FISA court. They don't even care about the appearance of fairness. They do what they want.
IG investigations have proven to be flimsy exonerations of Deep State criminality. Any honest observer can see that there was a carefully organized plan by top officials to control the outcome of the Presidential election. This corrupt plan involved lying to the FISA court, illegal surveillance and unmasking of citizens and conspiring with media partners to make sure lies were widely circulated to voters. The government conspirators and the majority of the media were functioning as nothing more than a branch of Hillary's campaign. That's a lot of power aimed at destroying Trump.
To an IG investigator, this monumental scandal was presented to us as nothing to be very concerned about. Yes, a few minor rules were inadvertently broken and there did appear to be some bias, but there was no reason at all to think that bias effected any actions. If the agencies involved make a training video and set aside a day for a training meeting, then that should satisfy us completely.
- The third type of investigation involves investigating an imaginary crime for political reasons . The Mueller investigation and the impeachment investigation are two examples of this. Probably as a justification for illegal surveillance they were already doing, the conspirators pretended that there was powerful evidence that Trump was colluding with Putin to win the election. Lies about this issue propelled the country into 3 years of stories about nothing stories and investigations about something that never happened. Never in the history of nothing has nothing been so thoroughly covered.
Because there was nothing, and because it was known from the start that, " there is no big there, there ", the Mueller Team used several irrelevant legal actions to prolong the belief that they were closing in on Trump. Mueller arranged for their media partner, CNN, to film the early morning swat team raid on 67 year old Roger Stone's home. It was very dramatic and very un-necessary. Also, some small-time Russian troll farms were indicted so that the word "Russia" could fill the news, prolonging the desired myth. One of the indicted firms did not even exist. The others did not appear to favor any one candidate and much of their activity was after the election .
Mueller led a 40 million dollar investigation looking for a crime. That effort failed at finding any collusion, but it did play a role in the Democrats winning a majority in the House of Representatives. That then enabled another investigation of an imaginary crime for political purposes. A scripted hearsay 'whistleblower' submitted lies that allowed Adam Schiff to continue his own campaign of lies. You know the rest of the story. Trump is being falsely charged for doing what Biden bragged about doing.
The Deep State and the media appear to believe that we are fooled by these fraudulent investigations. We are not fooled. We are tired of the lies and the arrogance.
We are increasingly angry that there is a double standard of justice in this country. There is a protected class of people who are not prosecuted for their crimes. This needs to end.
insanelysane , 9 minutes ago link
DonGenaro , 10 minutes ago linkThe sheeple are easily led including the opposition sheeple. Two quick examples:
1. In the email scandal, Hillary was guilty, beyond a shadow of a doubt, of violating the FOIA by conducting all State Department business via a personal email She was guilty. Yet her team, listen up sheeple, her team made it about whether or not classified information was transmitted. This is a gray area which could be defended. She knew she was guilty of the FOIA violation because it was the whole reason the server was set up in the first place. Yet she got away with it because everyone focused on the classifications of emails which was a gray area.
2. In the Weiner / Abedin laptop matter, it is and was illegal for any of these emails to be on a personal computer. Again, guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet again everyone focused on what was in the emails and not the fact that just possessing the emails was illegal. So the FBI was able to say nothing new here and let it drop. If another group such as the US Marshals was in charge of this investigation, Weiner / Abedin would have been fully charged with possessing these emails. They would have been pressured to reveal why it was named Insurance and have been asked to cut a deal.
East Indian , 23 minutes ago linkAssange rots in jail, and Maxwell walks free, while Trump is busy pleasuring every Zionist in sight
hardmedicine , 38 minutes ago linkA comment in 'The Gateway Pundit':
"Andy McCabe admits lying to the FBI and nothing happens. The FBI lies to Gen. Flynn and he faces jail time. Justice in Deep State America."
- reader ricocat1
hoffstetter , 40 minutes ago linkhis name was Seth Rich!
buckboy , 57 minutes ago linkThe purpose of show trials is to fool those that don't pay attention. There are millions of US citizens that get their news from their neighbor or a narrow set of information that is disseminated by media that parrot their providers verbatim without challenge. Such people are quite regularly fooled and some vote.
marlin2009 , 1 hour ago linkWe, the People are free to bitch and moan.
Deep Snorkeler , 1 hour ago linkThe double standard justice system in America is appalling and even worse than communists. Americans really don’t have any credit to criticize communist countries. The ruling class is no better than them.
The media and ruling classes have tried decades to brainwashed the mass to believe that the less or even not corrupted.
Old Hippie Patriot , 1 hour ago linkTrump's Non-Crimes
Trump University Fraud: Trump paid fine
Trump Taj Mahal Casino Money Laundering: Trump paid fine
Trump Foundation Fraud: Trump paid fine
Trump Campaign Law Violations: pending
Trump Obstruction:
Trump Abuse of Power:
Trump...
HANGTHEOWL , 1 hour ago linkThey could have never pulled off the JFK assassination had the internet existed back in 1963. Time for the Epstein *********** to be posted on the internet. Even the asleep would realize the unimaginable evil that has been controlling this world for millenia.
monty42 , 1 hour ago linkI am not sure about that,,we have the net now,,and although there are many of us that pay attention and figure out their crimes and hoax's,,,,they still get away with them,,,,,,NASA still gets 59 million a day to fake the space program,,,
HANGTHEOWL , 57 minutes ago linkWhy not? They pulled off 9/11. And what do we have? The same as with the JFK murder. People still arguing over how it was done, and ignoring the obvious, historically established now, of who benefited and why. Grassy knoll, 2nd shooter, or directed energy weapons or explosives, internet or not, still chasing the tail.
True, they murdered 3,000 of us on 9-11,,right on TV, using plainly obvious controlled demolitions, and to date they have still gotten away with it...
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Jan 18, 2020 | www.unz.com
Peripatetic Commenter , says: Show Comment January 17, 2020 at 9:43 pm GMT
I don't think it will be long before we see Congress in the US calling for invasion of Russia on the grounds of a lack of diversity, lack of respect for LGBTP and so forth.
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Nov 24, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Likbez,It looks like UK and USA are engaged in the contest to see who can come up with the most surreal anti-Russian propaganda psy-ops.
British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns
That shed some light on the common origin of MH17, Russiagate and Scripal propaganda campaigns connecting all three with British government's psy-op operation called The ' Integrity Initiative ' which builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.
And among others participants, William Browder is listed too:
Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core cluster also includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council shill Ben Nimmo and the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person of interest is Andrew Wood who handed the Steele 'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus of the BBC.Here is one interesting comment from MoA:Anya, Nov 24, 2018 11:57:00 AM
The British government has been running a serious meddling into the US affairs:https://www.zerohedge.com/n...
"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soilA Steele & Skrupal's anti-Russian / anti-Trump saga: https://spectator.org/big-d...
throughout 2016.""Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..."For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.
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Jan 02, 2020 | crookedtimber.org
As I see it, intersectionality combines a recognition that people are oppressed both through the economic structures of capitalism and as members of various subordinate groups with a rejection of both:
- "essentialist" identity politics, based on the claim that some particular aspect of identity (gender, race, sexuality, disability etc) should trump all others; and
- "working class" politics, presented as a politics of universal liberation, but reduced by the failure of revolutionary Marxism to another kind of identity politics (I took this formulation from Don Arthur on Twitter. I had something to say about class and Marxism a while back)
likbez 01.02.20 at 1:11 am (no link)
Jake Gibson 01.01.20 at 3:49 pm @35Here, I thought likbez was just a social reactionary, now I find he/she is also an infowars style conspiracist.
This is an ad hominem attack and as such is without merits.
Being labeled a conspiracist is actually not that bad, as probably 80% of major conspiracies (the term invented by CIA to discredit the opposition to Warren commission findings) proved to be the most adequate, albeit "politically incorrect" explanations of the events in question. They are just the explanations that undermine the establishment narrative. Right now most people (around 61% of voters and 71% of independents) believe that CIA operatives at senior levels played active role in JFK assassination. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-thing-in-politics-most-americans-believe-in-jfk-conspiracies/
So IMHO if a person views Russiagate as a color revolution against Trump run by intelligence agencies and Ukrainegate as attempt to replicate 2018 success with Mueller witch hunt on a new level by neoliberal Democrats led by Pelosi and Schumer, this suggests some attempt of independent thinking, and some level of resistance to neoliberal groupthink. Which may be a bridge too far, but in general is not that bad, even if wrong.
The opposite camp that does not question the establishment narrative, especially as for Russiagate (and related false flag operations such as DNC leak converted by Crowdstrike into Russian hack using CIA malware, probably from Vault 7 exposed by Wikileaks and the creation of Gussifer 2.0 fake personality ) can be called a camp of neoliberal lemmings, or victims of neoliberal brainwashing, your choice ;-)
Also for an Infowars adept I have friends in strange places -- a faction of Swedish communists -- which somehow managed to replicate my views almost to a tee ;-)
Almost half of the members of the Communist Party in Malmö are resigning. Instead, they plan establish a new workers' party that doesn't put as much emphasis on things like multiculturalism, LGBT issues and climate alarmism, which have become the staples and rallying calls of today's left.
Nils Littorin, one of the defectors, explained to Lokaltidningen that today's left has become part of the elite and has come to "dismiss the views of the working class as alien and problematic". Littorin suggested that the left, as a movement, is going through a prolonged identity crisis and that his group, instead, intends to stick to the original values, such as class warfare.
"They don't understand why so many workers don't think that multiculturalism, the LGBT movement and Greta Thunberg are something fantastic, but instead believe we are in the 1930s' Germany and that workers who vote [right-wing] Sweden Democrats have been infected by some Nazi sickness," he explained to Lokaltidningen.
The right-wingers' major gains from the working class are, according to Littorin, a token of widespread dissatisfaction with liberal economic migration that leads to "low-wage competition" and the "ghettoisation of communities", a development that "only benefits major companies".
According to Littorin, one of the underlying problems is a "chaotic" immigration policy that has led to cultural clashes, segregation and exclusion due to an uncontrolled influx from parts of the world characterised by honour culture and clan mentalities.
Littorin described multiculturalism, LGBT issues and the climate movement as state ideologies that are "rammed down people's throats". According to him, phenomena like LGBT-certification and the cult around 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg and "other -isms" happen at the expense of the real issues, such as income equality.
"Pride, for instance, has been reduced to dealing with sexual orientation. We believe that human dignity is primarily about having a job and having pension insurance that means that you are not forced to live on crumbs when you are old," Littorin explained.
The goal, according to Littorin is to enter Malmö City Council by 2022. The name of the party remains undetermined, but Littorin stressed that the word "Communist" will no longer be present.
It's a word drawn to the dirt, a nasty word today, and not entirely undeservedly. In communist parties, there is this risk of elitism, self-indulgence, and a belief that a certain avant-garde should lead a working class that does not know its own best interests, instead of asking people what they want.
20th-century Communism died with the Soviet Union, it has never been successfully updated for the 21st century but has been stuck in 100-year-old books. But the principles that Marx formulated, they still apply to me," Littorin concluded.
Earlier this week, Markus Allard, the leader of the left-wing Örebro Party expressed similar thoughts in an opinion piece called "Socialists don't belong to the left", accusing the mainstream left of completely abandoning its base , switching from the working class to "parasitic grant-grabbing layers within the middle class".
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Dec 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Senior OPCW Official Busted: Leaked Email Exposes Orders To "Delete All Traces" Of Dissent On Douma by Tyler Durden Sat, 12/28/2019 - 10:30 0 SHARES
Wikileaks has released their fourth set of leaks from the OPCW's Douma investigation, revealing new details about the alleged deletion of important information regarding the fact-finding mission.
RELEASE: OPCW-Douma Docs 4. Four leaked documents from the OPCW reveal that toxicologists ruled out deaths from chlorine exposure and a senior official ordered the deletion of the dissenting engineering report from OPCW's internal repository of documents. https://t.co/ndK4sRikNk
-- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 27, 2019"One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of the fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW. It includes an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW , where he instructs that an engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the organisation," WikiLeaks writes. Included in the email is the following directive:
" Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive] And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.'"
According to Wikileaks, the main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma, was that two of the cylinders were most likely manually placed at the site, rather than dropped.
"The main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma and two cylinders that were found on the site of the alleged attack, was that they were more likely manually placed there than dropped from a plane or helicopter from considerable heights. His findings were omitted from the official final OPCW report on the Douma incident," the Wikileaks report said.
It must be remembered that the U.S. launched an attack on Damascus, Syria on April 14, 2018 over alleged chemical weapons usage by pro-Assad forces at Douma.
AP file image.Another document released Friday is minutes from a meeting on 6 June 2018 where four staff members of the OPCW had discussions with "three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist" (all specialists in chemical weapons, according to the minutes).
Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: "the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was
-- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 27, 2019
no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure". https://t.co/j5Jgjiz8UY pic.twitter.com/vgPaTtsdQNThe purpose of this meeting was two-fold. The first objective was "to solicit expert advice on the value of exhuming suspected victims of the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018". According to the minutes, the OPCW team was advised by the experts that there would be little use in conducting exhumations. The second point was "To elicit expert opinions from the forensic toxicologists regarding the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims."
More specifically, " whether the symptoms observed in victims were consistent with exposure to chlorine or other reactive chlorine gas."
According to the minutes leaked Friday: "With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure ."
The OPCW team members wrote that the key "take-away message" from the meeting was "that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified".
* * *
See full details at Wikileaks.org
JohnFrodo , 28 minutes ago link
africoman , 38 minutes ago linkpity the human pawns at the center of this mess.
ponyboy99 , 40 minutes ago linkThere has been a Newsweek reporter who quite over editorial block of this OPCW case here also another interview by Grayzone
The isisrahell have such long hand to pull the plug any stories implicating their crime in progress otherwise they can put out some bs spins as bombshell reporting about US lies in Afghanistan war on their wapo for public for those who read it was nothing important revealed except being a misdirected na
ponyboy99 , 47 minutes ago linkIf you want to pay off that student loan you're going to print what they tell you to print. You're going to inject kids with what they tell you to inject them with. You're going to think what they tell you to think or you're going to spend your days in a Prole bar drinking Blatz.
Ace006 , 57 minutes ago linkIf you go thru life assuming every single thing is a farce and a lie (Roddy Piper) these events can not only be explained, they can be predicted.
Weihan , 58 minutes ago linkSOMEbody's got to ensure the intergrity of the Documents Registry Archive
Nothing , 1 hour ago linkThe globalist deep-state's reach is legendary.
Greed is King , 36 minutes ago linkyes, an attack was launched, 50 missiles I believe, after loud warnings that it was coming, and none of them actually hit anything significant ... this is the way the game is played .... the good news is that the missiles cost $50 million, and now they will have to be replaced, by the Pentagon, first borrowing the money through the US Treasury offerings, and then paying for them from new money printed by the Federal Reserve. capische?
africoman , 16 minutes ago linkThat`s the way it`s always been, it`s the eternal war of good against evil.
And when one evil enemy is defeated, it`s necessary to create a new evil enemy, how else can the Establishment Elite make money from war, death and destruction.
Thordoom , 1 hour ago linkIt's really very awkward & telling how ***** these bunch of western nations are looking tough on taking out poor defenceless country like Syria on ******** & at the satried to ease real kickass Russian as you described when they launch the attacks
I kind wish the US & their Zionist clown launch such huge attacks on Iran based on false flag
I really wanted these evil aggressive powers to taste what it is like to get bombed back even one they used to throw on multiple weaker nations freely with nothing to fear as retribution etc
DCFusor , 1 hour ago linkThis organisations are all set up in Europe and US run by the filthiest filth on earth who still think they have God given right to imperial rule over the world.
British elite is the worst of all.
St. TwinkleToes , 1 hour ago linkYour military-industrial-intelligence complex at work, creating justification for more funding, like always - and who cares if people die as a result? Like Soros said, if they didn't do it, someone else would. (do I need /sarc?).
They don't like to be shown to be in charge, just to be in charge. And if you think this is a function of the current admin, you've been slow in the head and deaf and blind for quite some time.
I've watched since Eisenhower, and "it's always something". Doesn't matter what color the clown in chief's tie is.
veritas semper vinces , 2 hours ago linkImagine millions of government employees paid for by America's tax payer class, involved in covert operations undermining nation states for the benefit of war mongering shadow overlords counting on more never ending chaos feeding their hunger for power.
This isn't Orwell's 1984, this Team America on opioids.
holgerdanske , 1 hour ago linkSenior OPCW official had orders from US/ the Donald. Remember that the Donald bombed Syria based on this fake report , after a false flag done by Al Qaeda's artistic branch, the White Helmets.
lwilland1012 , 3 hours ago linkIt was May that insisted on this attack. Remember the "poison" attack and the evil Russians?
ken , 1 hour ago linkPray, do tell where are the consequences for these literal demons that engaged in war crimes? It is quite clear: as long as you are a member of the establishment, you can do whatever the f*ck you want. Why do we even follow the law, then? Given the precedent that is being set, we might as well not have any.
WorkingClassMan , 3 hours ago linkWell, they are looking forward to using all those Israeli weapons, er, uh, products, that local law enforcement has purchased...so watch out for Co-Intel Pro elicitation going forward....?
turkey george palmer , 3 hours ago linkEverybody knows the Golem (USA) does Isn'treal's bidding in Syria and elsewhere in the Near East. Hopefully they keep hammering in the fact that this "gas attack" was an obvious set-up to use as a pretext (flimsy itself on the face of it) to brutalize Assad and Syria on behalf of Isn'treal.
The whole thing is built on ******* lies. Worst part about it is, nothing will happen.
adonisdemilo , 3 hours ago linkOnly official news is to believed. You see it and it is a lie. they tell you to believe it. A lot of people casually believe whatever is spoken on TV. They become teachers and are taught in college what is right and wrong. We only have a few years before all the brain dead are in charge and robotically following the message like zombies with no brain
johnnycanuck , 3 hours ago linkThird rate script, third rate actors and crooked investigators. TPTB seem to have a plan worked out. Their problem now is that we, the hoi-polloi, have seen it all before, many times, and we can now recognise ******** when it's used to try to influence us.
5fingerdiscount , 3 hours ago linkIt is difficult to underestimate the seriousness of this manipulative act by the OPCW. In a response to the conservative author Peter Hitchens, who also writes for the Mail on Sunday – he is of course the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens – the OPCW admits that its so-called technical secretariat "is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised [sic] release of the document".
Then it adds: "At this time, there is no further public information on this matter and the OPCW is unable to accommodate [sic] requests for interviews". It's a tactic that until now seems to have worked: not a single news media which reported the OPCW's official conclusions has followed up the story of the report which the OPCW suppressed.
And you bet the OPCW is not going to "accommodate" interviews. For here is an institution investigating a war crime in a conflict which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives – yet its only response to an enquiry about the engineers' "secret" assessment is to concentrate on its own witch-hunt for the source of the document it wished to keep secret from the world.
If this is not lamentable enough, the OPCW – whose final report came to more than a hundred pages and which even issued an easy-to-read precis version for journalists – now slams shut its steel doors in the hope of preventing even more information reaching the press.
Helg Saracen , 3 hours ago linkInstead of these pieces concentrating on the whistleblower how about putting a little heat on the 50 lying bastards who initiated the coverup?
carbonmutant , 4 hours ago linkThe destruction of the countries of the Middle East for the sake of a dwarf with giant ambitions is the most stupid thing the United States has done over the past 30 years in its foreign policy. And yes, all the wars in the Middle East were grounded in lies. And the Americans paid for it all from start to finish. When Americans realize that they need to defend their national interests, and not other people's national interests, maybe something in the Middle East will change for the better. True, I am afraid that with the hight level of stupidity and shortsightedness that is common among Americans, the United States is more likely to be destroyed faster. No offense.
And I propose to remember the Syrian Christians who were destroyed by the Saudi Wahhabis, hired by the CIA with the money of American taxpayers and at the request of Israel. Until the Americans begin to investigate the activities of the CIA (and this activity causes the United States only harm), the responsibility for this genocide (you heard right) will be on the American nation. It turns out that in the Middle East you are primarily destroying Christians. How interesting, why such zeal.
dogbert8 , 4 hours ago linkYou gotta wonder how much the deep state has deleted about their interference in Trump's administration...
Joiningupthedots , 4 hours ago linkPretty much everyone with a brain realizes this all was a lie; only the M5M and the DC swamp continue to pretend it wasn't.
ClickNLook , 3 hours ago linkWho really made the order though?
Condor_0000 , 4 hours ago linkSebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW needs to be interrogated to find out.
Newsweek Reporter Quits After Editors Block Coverage of OPCW Syria Scandal
Aaron Mate
According to whistleblower testimony and leaked documents, OPCW officials raised alarm about the suppression of critical findings that undermine the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Haddad's editors at Newsweek rejected his attempts to cover the story. "If I don't find another position in journalism because of this, I'm perfectly happy to accept that consequence," Haddad says. "It's not desirable. But there is no way I could have continued in that job knowing that I couldn't report something like this."
New leaks continue to expose a cover-up by the OPCW – the world's top chemical weapons watchdog – over a critical event in Syria. Documents, emails, and testimony from OPCW officials have raised major doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. The leaked OPCW information has been released in pieces by Wikileaks. The latest documents contain a number of significant revelations – including that that about 20 OPCW officials voiced concerns that their scientific findings and on-the-ground evidence was suppressed and excluded.
This is, without a doubt, a major global scandal: the OPCW, under reported US pressure, suppressing vital evidence about allegations of chemical weapons. But that very fact exposes another global scandal: with the exception of small outlets like The Grayzone, the mass media has widely ignored or whitewashed this story. And this widespread censorship of the OPCW scandal has just led one journalist to resign. Up until recently, Tareq Haddad was a reporter at Newsweek. But in early December, Tareq announced that he had quit his position after Newsweek refused to publish his story about the OPCW cover up over Syria.
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Dec 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Mark McCarty , 21 December 2019 at 02:34 PM
Here's a key point - on June 12, Assange announces that Wikileaks will soon be releasing info pertinent to Hillary. HE DOES NOT SAY THAT HE WILL BE RELEASING DNC EMAILS.And yet, on June 14, Crowdstrike reports a Russian hack of the DNC servers - and a day later, Guccifer 2.0 emerges and proclaims himself to be the hacker, takes credit for the upcoming Wikileaks DNC releases, publishes the Trump oppo research which Crowdstrike claimed he had taken, and intentionally adds "Russian footprints" to his metadata.
So how did Crowdstrike and G2.0 know that DNC EMAILS would be released?
Because, as Larry postulates, the US intelligence community had intercepted communications between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in which Seth had offered the DNC emails (consistent with the report of Sy Hersh's source within the FBI).
So US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks.
That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack was born - distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam.
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Dec 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org
J_Garbo ,
I suspected that Deep State has at least two opposing factions. The Realistists want him to break up the empire, turn back into a republic; the Delusionals want to extend the empire, continue to exploit and destroy the world. If so, the contradictions, reversals, incoherence make sense. IMO as I said.Gary Weglarz ,
I predict that all Western MSM will begin to accurately and vocally cover Mr. Binney's findings about this odious and treasonous U.S. government psyop at just about the exact time that -- "hell freezes over" -- as they say.Jen ,
They don't need to, they have Tony Blair's fellow Brit psycho Boris Johnson to go on autopilot and blame the Russians the moment something happens and just before London Met start their investigations.
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Dec 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report insists that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were created by Russia's military intelligence organization, the GRU, as part of a Russian plot to meddle in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election. But this is a lie. Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were created by Brennan's CIA and this action by the CIA should be a target of U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation. Let me explain why.
Let us start with the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment aka ICA. Only three agencies of the 17 in the U.S. intelligence community contributed to and coordinated on the ICA--the FBI, the CIA and NSA. In the preamble to the ICA, you can read the following explanation about methodology:
When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as "we assess" or "we judge," they are conveying an analytic assessment or judgment
To be clear, the phrase,"We assess", is intel community jargon for "opinion". If there was actual evidence or source material for a judgment the writer of the assessment would state, "According to a reliable source" or "knowledgeable source" or "documentary evidence."
Pay close attention to what the analysts writing the ICA stated about the GRU and Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks:
We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.
- Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims about his likely Russian identity throughout the election. Press reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 interacted with journalists.
- Content that we assess was taken from e-mail accounts targeted by the GRU in March 2016 appeared on DCLeaks.com starting in June.
We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.
Not one piece of corroborating intelligence. It is all based on opinion and strong belief. There was no human source report or electronic intercept pointing to a relationship between the GRU and the two alleged creations of the GRU--Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com. Now consider the spin that Robert Mueller put on this opinion in his report on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Mueller bluffs the unsuspecting reader into believing that it is a proven fact that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were Russian assets. But he is relying on a mere opinion from a handpicked group of intel analysts working under the direction of then CIA Director John Brennan.
Here's Mueller's take (I apologize for the lengthy quote but it is important that you read how the Mueller team presents this):
DCLeaks
"The GRU began planning the releases at least as early as April 19, 2016, when Unit 26165 registered the domain dcleaks.com through a service that anonymized the registrant.137 Unit 26165 paid for the registration using a pool of bitcoin that it had mined.138 The dcleaks.com landing page pointed to different tranches of stolen documents, arranged by victim or subject matter. Other dcleaks.com pages contained indexes of the stolen emails that were being released (bearing the sender, recipient, and date of the email). To control access and the timing of releases, pages were sometimes password-protected for a period of time and later made unrestricted to the public.
Starting in June 2016, the GRU posted stolen documents onto the website dcleaks.com, including documents stolen from a number of individuals associated with the Clinton Campaign. These documents appeared to have originated from personal email accounts (in particular, Google and Microsoft accounts), rather than the DNC and DCCC computer networks. DCLeaks victims included an advisor to the Clinton Campaign, a former DNC employee and Clinton Campaign employee, and four other campaign volunteers.139 The GRU released through dcleaks.com thousands of documents, including personal identifying and financial information, internal correspondence related to the"Clinton Campaign and prior political jobs, and fundraising files and information.140
GRU officers operated a Facebook page under the DCLeaks moniker, which they primarily used to promote releases of materials.141 The Facebook page was administered through a small number of preexisting GRU-controlled Facebook accounts.142
GRU officers also used the DCLeaks Facebook account, the Twitter account @dcleaks__, and the email account [email protected] to communicate privately with reporters and other U.S. persons. GRU officers using the DCLeaks persona gave certain reporters early access to archives of leaked files by sending them links and passwords to pages on the dcleaks.com website that had not yet become public. For example, on July 14, 2016, GRU officers operating under the DCLeaks persona sent a link and password for a non-public DCLeaks webpage to a U.S. reporter via the Facebook account.143 Similarly, on September 14, 2016, GRU officers sent reporters Twitter direct messages from @dcleaks_, with a password to another non-public part of the dcleaks.com website.144
The dcleaks.com website remained operational and public until March 2017."Guccifer 2.0
On June 14, 2016, the DNC and its cyber-response team announced the breach of the DNC network and suspected theft of DNC documents. In the statements, the cyber-response team alleged that Russian state-sponsored actors (which they referred to as "Fancy Bear") were responsible for the breach.145 Apparently in response to that announcement, on June 15, 2016, GRU officers using the persona Guccifer 2.0 created a WordPress blog. In the hours leading up to the launch of that WordPress blog, GRU officers logged into a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455 and searched for a number of specific words and phrases in English, including "some hundred sheets," "illuminati," and "worldwide known." Approximately two hours after the last of those searches, Guccifer 2.0 published its first post, attributing the DNC server hack to a lone Romanian hacker and using several of the unique English words and phrases that the GRU officers had searched for that day.146
That same day, June 15, 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress blog to begin releasing to the public documents stolen from the DNC and DCCC computer networks.
The Guccifer 2.0 persona ultimately released thousands of documents stolen from the DNC and DCCC in a series of blog posts between June 15, 2016 and October 18, 2016.147 Released documents included opposition research performed by the DNC (including a memorandum analyzing potential criticisms of candidate Trump), internal policy documents (such as recommendations on how to address politically sensitive issues), analyses of specific congressional races, and fundraising documents. Releases were organized around thematic issues, such as specific states (e.g., Florida and Pennsylvania) that were perceived as competitive in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Beginning in late June 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release documents directly to reporters and other interested individuals. Specifically, on June 27, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to the news outlet The Smoking Gun offering to provide "exclusive access to some leaked emails linked [to] Hillary Clinton's staff."148 The GRU later sent the reporter a password and link to a locked portion of the dcleaks.com website that contained an archive of emails stolen by Unit 26165 from a Clinton Campaign volunteer in March 2016.149 "That the Guccifer 2.0 persona provided reporters access to a restricted portion of the DCLeaks website tends to indicate that both personas were operated by the same or a closely-related group of people.150
The GRU continued its release efforts through Guccifer 2.0 into August 2016. For example, on August 15, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona sent a candidate for the U.S. Congress documents related to the candidate's opponent.151 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of Florida-related data stolen from the DCCC to a U.S. blogger covering Florida politics.152 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona sent a U.S. reporter documents stolen from the DCCC pertaining to the Black Lives Matter movement.153"
Wow. Sounds pretty convincing. The documents referencing communications by DCLeaks or Guccifer 2.0 with Wikileaks are real. What is not true is that these entities were GRU assets.
In October 2015 John Brennan reorganized the CIA . As part of that reorganization he created a new directorate--DIRECTORATE OF DIGITAL INNOVATION. Its mission was to "manipulate digital footprints." In other words, this was the Directorate that did the work of creating Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. One of their specialties, creating Digital Dust.
We also know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the CIA was using software specifically designed to mask CIA activity and make it appear like it was done by a foreign entity. Wikipedia describes the Vault 7 documents :
Vault 7 is a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, that detail activities and capabilities of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dated from 2013–2016, include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs,[1] web browsers (including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Software ASA),[2][3][4] and the operating systems of most smartphones (including Apple's iOS and Google's Android), as well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux[5][6
One of the tools in Vault 7 carries the innocuous name, MARBLE. Hackernews explains the purpose and function of MARBLE:
Dubbed "Marble," the part 3 of CIA files contains 676 source code files of a secret anti-forensic Marble Framework, which is basically an obfuscator or a packer used to hide the true source of CIA malware.
The CIA's Marble Framework tool includes a variety of different algorithm with foreign language text intentionally inserted into the malware source code to fool security analysts and falsely attribute attacks to the wrong nation.Marble is used to hamper[ing] forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA," says the whistleblowing site.
"...for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion," WikiLeaks explains.
So guess what gullible techies "discovered" in mid-June 2016? The meta data in the Guccifer 2.0 communications had "Russian fingerprints."
We still don't know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0 -- the nom de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove it -- left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.
Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name "Феликс Эдмундович." That means the computer was configured to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, "Феликс Эдмундович" is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.)
Just use your common sense. If the Russians were really trying to carry out a covert cyberattack, do you really think they are so sloppy and incompetent to insert the name of the creator of the Soviet secret police in the metadata? No. The Russians are not clowns. This was a clumsy attempt to frame the Russians.
Why would the CIA do this? The CIA knew that Podesta's emails had been hacked and were circulating on the internet. But they had no evidence about the identity of the culprit. If they had such evidence, they would have cited it in the 2017 ICA.
The U.S. intelligence community became aware around May 26, 2016 that someone with access to the DNC network was offering those emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange and people who spoke to him indicate that the person was Seth Rich. Whether or not it was Seth, the Trump Task Force at CIA was aware that the emails, which would be embarrassing to the Clinton campaign, would be released at some time in the future. Hence the motive to create Guccifer 2.0 and pin the blame on Russia.
It is essential to recall the timeline of the alleged Russian intrusion into the DNC network. The only source for the claim that Russia hacked the DNC is a private cyber security firm, CrowdStrike. Here is the timeline for the DNC "hack."
Here are the facts on the public record. They are at odds with the claims of the Intelligence Community:
- It was 29 April 2016 , when the DNC claims it became aware its servers had been penetrated. No claim yet about who was responsible. And no claim that there had been a prior warning by the FBI of a penetration of the DNC by Russian military intelligence.
- According to CrowdStrike founder , Dimitri Alperovitch, his company first supposedly detected the Russians mucking around inside the DNC server on 6 May 2016. A CrowdStrike intelligence analyst reportedly told Alperovitch that:
- Falcon had identified not one but two Russian intruders: Cozy Bear, a group CrowdStrike's experts believed was affiliated with the FSB, Russia's answer to the CIA; and Fancy Bear, which they had linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.
- The Wikileaks data shows that the last message copied from the DNC network is dated Wed, 25 May 2016 08:48:35.
- 10 June 2016 --CrowdStrike waited until 10 June 2016 to take concrete steps to clean up the DNC network. Alperovitch told Esquire's Vicky Ward that: 'Ultimately, the teams decided it was necessary to replace the software on every computer at the DNC. Until the network was clean, secrecy was vital. On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave their laptops in the office."
- On June 14, 2016 , Ellen Nakamura, a Washington Post reporter who had been briefed by computer security company hired by the DNC -- Crowdstrike--, wrote:
- Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.
- The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts.
- The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available.
- 15 June, 2016 , an internet "personality" self-described as Guccifer 2.0 surfaces and claims to be responsible for the hacks but denies being Russian. The people/entity behind Guccifer 2.0:
- Used a Russian VPN service provider to conceal their identity.
- Created an email account with AOL.fr (a service that exposes the sender's IP address) and contacted the press (exposing his VPN IP address in the process).
- Contacted various media outlets through this set up and claimed credit for hacking the DNC, sharing copies of files purportedly from the hack (one of which had Russian error messages embedded in them) with reporters from Gawker, The Smoking Gun and other outlets.
- Carried out searches for terms that were mostly in English, several of which would appear in Guccifer 2.0's first blog post. They chose to do this via a server based in Moscow. (this is from the indictment,
"On or about June 15, 2016, the Conspirators logged into a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455")- Created a blog and made an initial blog post claiming to have hacked the DNC, providing links to various documents as proof.
- Carelessly dropped a "Russian Smiley" into his first blog post.
- Managed to add the name "Феликс Эдмундович" (which translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, also known as "Iron Felix") to the metadata of several documents. (Several sources went beyond what the evidence shows and made claims about Guccifer 2.0 using a Russian keyboard, however, these claims are just assumptions made in response to the presence of cyrillic characters.)
The only thing that the Guccifer 2.0 character did not do to declare its Russian heritage was to take out full page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post. But the "forensic" fingerprints that Guccifer 2.0 was leaving behind is not the only inexplicable event.
Time for the common sense standard again. Crowdstrike detected the Russians on the 6th of May, according to CEO Dimitri Alperovitch, but took no steps to shutdown the network, eliminate the malware and clean the computers until 34 days later, i.e., the 10th of June. That is 34 days of inexcusable inaction.
It is only AFTER Julian Assange announces on 12 June 2016 that WikiLeaks has emails relating to Hillary Clinton that DCLeaks or Guccifer 2.0 try to contact Assange.
The actions attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 should be priority investigative targets for U.S. Attorney John Durham's team of investigators. This potential use of a known CIA tool, developed under Brennan with the sole purpose to obfuscate the source of intrusions, pointing to another nation, as a false flag operation, is one of the actions and issues that U.S. Attorney John Durham should be looking into as a potential act of "Seditious conspiracy. It needs to be done. To quote the CIA, I strongly assess that the only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU.
Posted at 02:13 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink
Factotum , 20 December 2019 at 02:45 PM
LJ bottom line: "The only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU."Paul Damascene , 20 December 2019 at 02:54 PMLarry, thanks -- vital clarifications and reminders. In your earlier presentation of this material did you not also distinguish between the way actually interagency assessments are titled, and ICA which seemed to have been framed to allow journalists or the unwary to link the ICA with more rigorous standards used by more authentic assessments?walrus , 20 December 2019 at 03:51 PMThank you Larry. You have discovered one more vital key to the conspiracy. We now need the evidence of Julian Assange. He is kept incommunicado and He is being tortured by the British in jail and will be murdered by the American judicial system if he lasts long enough to be extradited.Ghost Ship , 20 December 2019 at 04:04 PMYou can be sure he will be "Epsteined" before he appears in open court because he knows the source of what Wikileaks published. Once he is gone, mother Clinton is in the clear.
I can understand the GRU or SVR hacking the DNC and other e-mail servers because as intelligence services that is their job, but can anyone think of any examples of Russia (or the Soviet Union) using such information to take overt action?With the Russians not having the advantages that the NSA does (back doors in all US-designed network hardware/software and taps all over the internet), would Russia reveal anything unless it involved an immediate major national security threat. I doubt that would cover Trump.
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Dec 17, 2019 | www.whitehouse.gov
Issued on: December 17, 2019
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515Dear Madam Speaker:
I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.
The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!
By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy. You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nullification scheme -- yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America's founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build. Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying "I pray for the President," when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!
Your first claim, "Abuse of Power," is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination. You know that I had a totally innocent conversation with the President of Ukraine. I then had a second conversation that has been misquoted, mischaracterized, and fraudulently misrepresented. Fortunately, there was a transcript of the conversation taken, and you know from the transcript (which was immediately made available) that the paragraph in question was perfect. I said to President Zelensky: "I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it." I said do us a favor, not me , and our country , not a campaign. I then mentioned the Attorney General of the United States. Every time I talk with a foreign leader, I put America's interests first, just as I did with President Zelensky.
You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense -- it is no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power.
You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars of U.S. aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars. You know this because Biden bragged about it on video. Biden openly stated: "I said, 'I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars' I looked at them and said: 'I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a bitch. He got fired." Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it "looked bad." Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did.
President Zelensky has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No Pressure. He further emphasized that it was a "good phone call," that "I don't feel pressure," and explicitly stressed that "nobody pushed me." The Ukrainian Foreign Minister stated very clearly: "I have never seen a direct link between investigations and security assistance." He also said there was "No Pressure." Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a supporter of Ukraine who met privately with President Zelensky, has said: "At no time during this meeting was there any mention by Zelensky or any Ukrainian that they were feeling pressure to do anything in return for the military aid." Many meetings have been held between representatives of Ukraine and our country. Never once did Ukraine complain about pressure being applied -- not once! Ambassador Sondland testified that I told him: "No quid pro quo. I want nothing. I want nothing. I want President Zelensky to do the right thing, do what he ran on."
The second claim, so-called "Obstruction of Congress," is preposterous and dangerous. House Democrats are trying to impeach the duly elected President of the United States for asserting Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our Nation's history. Under that standard, every American president would have been impeached many times over. As liberal law professor Jonathan Turley warned when addressing Congressional Democrats: "I can't emphasize this enough if you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power. It's your abuse of power. You're doing precisely what you're criticizing the President for doing."
Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening. Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never recovered from this defeat. You have developed a full-fledged case of what many in the media call Trump Derangement Syndrome and sadly, you will never get over it! You are unwilling and unable to accept the verdict issued at the ballot box during the great Election of 2016. So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy!
Speaker Pelosi, you admitted just last week at a public forum that your party's impeachment effort has been going on for "two and a half years," long before you ever heard about a phone call with Ukraine. Nineteen minutes after I took the oath of office, the Washington Post published a story headlined, "The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun." Less than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, "I'm going to fight every day until he's impeached." House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our country's best decisions, the firing of James Comey (see Inspector General Reports) -- who the world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops our Nation has ever seen. A ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, declared just hours after she was sworn into office, "We're gonna go in there and we're gonna impeach the motherf****r." Representative Al Green said in May, "I'm concerned that if we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected." Again, you and your allies said, and did, all of these things long before you ever heard of President Zelensky or anything related to Ukraine. As you know very well, this impeachment drive has nothing to do with Ukraine, or the totally appropriate conversation I had with its new president. It only has to do with your attempt to undo the election of 2016 and steal the election of 2020!
Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me. His shameless lies and deceptions, dating all the way back to the Russia Hoax, is one of the main reasons we are here today.
You and your party are desperate to distract from America's extraordinary economy, incredible jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens. Your party simply cannot compete with our record: 7 million new jobs; the lowest-ever unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans; a rebuilt military; a completely reformed VA with Choice and Accountability for our great veterans; more than 170 new federal judges and two Supreme Court Justices; historic tax and regulation cuts; the elimination of the individual mandate; the first decline in prescription drug prices in half a century; the first new branch of the United States Military since 1947, the Space Force; strong protection of the Second Amendment; criminal justice reform; a defeated ISIS caliphate and the killing of the world's number one terrorist leader, al-Baghdadi; the replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal with the wonderful USMCA (Mexico and Canada); a breakthrough Phase One trade deal with China; massive new trade deals with Japan and South Korea; withdrawal from the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal; cancellation of the unfair and costly Paris Climate Accord; becoming the world's top energy producer; recognition of Israel's capital, opening the American Embassy in Jerusalem, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; a colossal reduction in illegal border crossings, the ending of Catch-and-Release, and the building of the Southern Border Wall -- and that is just the beginning, there is so much more. You cannot defend your extreme policies -- open borders, mass migration, high crime, crippling taxes, socialized healthcare, destruction of American energy, late-term taxpayer-funded abortion, elimination of the Second Amendment, radical far-left theories of law and justice, and constant partisan obstruction of both common sense and common good.
There is nothing I would rather do than stop referring to your party as the Do-Nothing Democrats. Unfortunately, I don't know that you will ever give me a chance to do so.
After three years of unfair and unwarranted investigations, 45 million dollars spent, 18 angry Democrat prosecutors, the entire force of the FBI, headed by leadership now proven to be totally incompetent and corrupt, you have found NOTHING! Few people in high position could have endured or passed this test. You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family. You conducted a fake investigation upon the democratically elected President of the United States, and you are doing it yet again.
There are not many people who could have taken the punishment inflicted during this period of time, and yet done so much for the success of America and its citizens. But instead of putting our country first, you have decided to disgrace our country still further. You completely failed with the Mueller report because there was nothing to find, so you decided to take the next hoax that came along, the phone call with Ukraine -- even though it was a perfect call. And by the way, when I speak to foreign countries, there are many people, with permission, listening to the call on both sides of the conversation.
You are the ones interfering in America's elections. You are the ones subverting America's Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.
Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt. Against all evidence, and regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the Russians -- a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other. You forced our Nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy. Yet, when the monstrous lie was debunked and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not apologize. You did not recant. You did not ask to be forgiven. You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection. Instead, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade -- you engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person. All of this was motivated by personal political calculation. Your Speakership and your party are held hostage by your most deranged and radical representatives of the far left. Each one of your members lives in fear of a socialist primary challenger -- this is what is driving impeachment. Look at Congressman Nadler's challenger. Look at yourself and others. Do not take our country down with your party.
If you truly cared about freedom and liberty for our Nation, then you would be devoting your vast investigative resources to exposing the full truth concerning the FBI's horrifying abuses of power before, during, and after the 2016 election -- including the use of spies against my campaign, the submission of false evidence to a FISA court, and the concealment of exculpatory evidence in order to frame the innocent. The FBI has great and honorable people, but the leadership was inept and corrupt. I would think that you would personally be appalled by these revelations, because in your press conference the day you announced impeachment, you tied the impeachment effort directly to the completely discredited Russia Hoax, declaring twice that "all roads lead to Putin," when you know that is an abject lie. I have been far tougher on Russia than President Obama ever even thought to be.
Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment -- against every shred of truth, fact, evidence, and legal principle -- is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America's Constitutional order. Our Founders feared the tribalization of partisan politics, and you are bringing their worst fears to life.
Worse still, I have been deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this impeachment scam right up until the present. I have been denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel present, to confront accusers, and to call and cross-examine witnesses, like the so-called whistleblower who started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made. Once I presented the transcribed call, which surprised and shocked the fraudsters (they never thought that such evidence would be presented), the so-called whistleblower, and the second whistleblower, disappeared because they got caught, their report was a fraud, and they were no longer going to be made available to us. In other words, once the phone call was made public, your whole plot blew up, but that didn't stop you from continuing.
More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.
You and others on your committees have long said impeachment must be bipartisan -- it is not. You said it was very divisive -- it certainly is, even far more than you ever thought possible -- and it will only get worse!
This is nothing more than an illegal, partisan attempted coup that will, based on recent sentiment, badly fail at the voting booth. You are not just after me, as President, you are after the entire Republican Party. But because of this colossal injustice, our party is more united than it has ever been before. History will judge you harshly as you proceed with this impeachment charade. Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution.
Perhaps most insulting of all is your false display of solemnity. You apparently have so little respect for the American People that you expect them to believe that you are approaching this impeachment somberly, reservedly, and reluctantly. No intelligent person believes what you are saying. Since the moment I won the election, the Democrat Party has been possessed by Impeachment Fever. There is no reticence. This is not a somber affair. You are making a mockery of impeachment and you are scarcely concealing your hatred of me, of the Republican Party, and tens of millions of patriotic Americans. The voters are wise, and they are seeing straight through this empty, hollow, and dangerous game you are playing.
I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election. They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power.
There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.
One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.
Sincerely yours,
DONALD J. TRUMP
President of the United States of Americacc: United States Senate
United States House of Representatives
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Dec 20, 2019 | www.unz.com
Realist , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:17 pm GMT
The Year of Manufactured Hysteria
The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc.
The unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two parties' strengthens the false perception that there is a choice when voting.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Lk , Dec 18 2019 22:19 utc | 26
The House impeachment is driven by several factors:
- After Russiagate, when Trump began to investigate its fraudulent origins, the Dems feared the exposure of Obama-era corruption if not high crimes. Hence Ukrainegate is preemptive political tactics.
- The investigation into Russiagate led right to Ukraine, and thus to Biden. In the context of Sanders' campaign, Ukrainegate became an imperative for the factions of the capitalist class that dominates the DNC. If Biden falls on Ukraine issues, then Sanders is inevitable; an anathema to Wall Street and Big Tech DNC donors.
- 3. While 1 and 2 dominate DNC machinations, foreign policy is also a factor. The foreign policy establishment is absolutely against any hesitation with respect to confronting Russia as part of a regional and global strategy for primacy. Trump's limited prevarications on Russia might threaten the long established strategy to expand Nato to Ukraine and thereby to encircle Russia and maintain US dominance over Europe. So, even though Trump names great power rivalry as the name of the game today, his inclination for making nice with Putin threatens to weaken the US hold over Europe, which Trump wants to label as an economic competitor.
It is with these points that the strategic differences become apparent: Trump is raising a realist, neo-mercantalist strategy against ALL potential competitors; the DNC and the deep state hold a strategy of liberal hegemony: globalization and US primacy through dominating regional alliances, and impregnating US hegemony INSIDE the vassal States of the empire.
All of this, however, is bound to fail for the DNC, and down the road for Trump himself.
The contradictions of US empire and global capitalism cannot be mitigated by either more liberal strategies or realist ones.
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Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Russ , Dec 18 2019 22:00 utc | 19
Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials, often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and incipient tyranny.Today's Deep State most resembles the colonial administrations during the heyday of European imperialism. These too worked to run their own secret foreign policy, and to bring their power to bear on domestic policy as well.
Although both halves of the One-Party really want the effective tyranny of state and corporate bureaucracies, it's not surprising that it's the Democrats (along with the MSM) taking the lead in openly defending the tyrannical proposition that the CIA should be running its own foreign (and implicitly domestic) policy, and that the president should be just a figurehead which follows orders. That goes with the Democrats' more avowedly technocratic style, and it goes with the ratchet effect whereby it's usually Democrats which push the policy envelope toward ever greater inequality, ecocide and tyranny.
Now is a time of rising irredentism and the decline of all the ideas of globalization and technocracy, though the reality is likely to hang on for awhile. The whole Deep State-Zionist-Russia-Deranged-Trump-Deranged-MSM-social media censorship campaign is globalization trying to maintain its monopoly of ideas by force, since it knows it can never win in a free clash of ideas.
Impeachment, and the pro-bureaucracy anti-democracy campaign related to it, besides its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems; forestalling Sanders), is the culmination of technocracy's attempted coup against a president who, even though he agrees with this cabal on all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, too damn honest about the evil of the US empire. If they can take him down, they think they can restore the full business-as-usual status quo including the compliance of the rest of the world.
Since impeachment's going to fail, we can expect the system to try other ways.
james , Dec 19 2019 1:51 utc | 57
hey b... i like your title - "How The Deep State Sunk The Democratic Party" ... could change it to" How the Deep State Sunk the USA" could work just as well...ptb , Dec 19 2019 2:07 utc | 62Seven of the 11 security state representatives who had joined the Democrats in 2018 gave the impulse for impeachment.
is this intentional?? it sort of looks like it...
good quote from @ 26 lk - "The contradictions of US empire and global capitalism cannot be mitigated by either more liberal strategies or realist ones."
@babyl-on 35
yes that is about right. The top power networks are all a tight mix of names from govt, MIC, and private equity (incl. top 2-3 investment banks). With the latter group naturally paying the salaries of the whole policy making ecosystem, and holding the positions that select future generations who will eventually take their place.They want the security of knowing noone in the world will mess with them. This necessitates that noone in the world *can* mess with them. Pretty straightforward from there.
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Dec 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
karlof1 , Dec 16 2019 20:51 utc | 22
Neocons lie should properly be called "threat inflation"
The underlying critical point-at-issue is credibility as I noted in my comment on b's 2017 article. I've since linked to tweets and other items by that trio; the one major change seems to have been the epiphany by them that they needed to go to where the action is and report it from there to regain their credibility.The fact remains that used car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking credibility sans a confession as to why they feel the need to lie to sell cars.
Their actions belie the guilt they feel for their choices, but a confession works much better at assuaging the soul while helping convince the audience that the change in heart's genuine. And that's the point as b notes--genuineness, whose first predicate is credibility.
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Dec 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Peter Svab via The Epoch Times,
A federal judge has denied requests by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to prompt the government to give him information he deems exculpatory and to dismiss the case against him .
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the government in arguing that Flynn was already given all the information to which he was entitled. The judge also dismissed Flynn's allegations of government misconduct, noting that Flynn already pleaded guilty to his crime and failed to raise his objections earlier when some of the issues he now complains about were brought to his attention.
"The sworn statements of Mr. Flynn and his former counsel belie his new claims of innocence and his new assertions that he was pressured into pleading guilty," Sullivan said in his Dec. 16 opinion ( pdf ).
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, pleaded guilty on Nov. 30, 2017, to one count of lying to the FBI. He's been expected to receive a light sentence, including no prison time, after extensively cooperating with the government on multiple investigations.
In June, he fired his lawyers and hired former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell , who has since accused the government of misconduct, particularly of withholding exculpatory information or providing it late.
Powell has argued that Flynn's previous lawyers had a conflict of interest because they testified in a related case against Flynn's former business partner. Flynn had previously told the court he would keep the lawyers despite the conflict, but Powell said prosecutors should have asked the judge to dismiss the lawyers anyway. Sullivan disagreed, saying Flynn failed to show a precedent that the prosecutors had that obligation.
Powell also said the government had no proper reason to investigate Flynn in the first place and that it had set up an "ambush interview" with the intention of making Flynn say something it could allege was false.
Sullivan disagreed again and said that previously, with the advice of his former lawyers, Flynn never "challenged the conditions of his FBI interview."
Flynn was interviewed by two FBI agents, Joe Pientka and Peter Strzok, on Jan. 24, 2017, two days after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump's national security adviser.
The prosecutors argued that the FBI had a "sufficient and appropriate basis" for the interview because Flynn days earlier told members of the Trump campaign, including soon-to-be Vice President Mike Pence, that he didn't discuss with the Russian ambassador the expulsion of Russian diplomats in late December 2016 by then-President Barack Obama.
Flynn later admitted in his statement of offense that he asked, via Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak, for Russia to only respond to the sanctions in a reciprocal manner and not escalate the situation.
The FBI was at the time investigating whether Trump campaign aides coordinated with Russian 2016 election meddling. No such coordination was established by the probe, which concluded more than two years later under then-special counsel Robert Mueller.
Powell argued that whatever Flynn told Pence and others in the transition team was none of the FBI's business.
"The Executive Branch has different reasons for saying different things publicly and privately, and not everyone is told the details of every conversation," she said in a previous court filing .
"If the FBI is charged with investigating discrepancies in statements made by government officials to the public, the entirety of its resources would be consumed in a week."
Powell said Flynn's answers to the agents weren't "material," meaning relevant to the FBI investigation of election meddling.
Sullivan, however, thought otherwise, using a broader description of the investigation. The bureau, he said, probed the "nature of any links between individuals associated with the [Trump] Campaign and Russia" and what Flynn said was material to it. The description Sullivan used appears to omit the context of the probe, which focused specifically on the Russian election meddling.
Lord Raglan , 1 minute ago link
thebigunit , 22 minutes ago linkPowell was dealt a bad hand by Flynn's previous corrupt and incompetent attorneys. The judge has an obligation to honor the new views of new counsel. He can't assume that Flynn had been well advised by former counsel. There's no evidence or history of that. They sold him out.
hairlessBalls , 30 minutes ago linkNot sure what's going on.
Sounds like Flynn got bad advice from his previous lawyers, and the judge is requiring Flynn to live with the consequences. In other words, it is as if the judge is prohibiting Flynn from changing legal representation because Flynn cannot do anything different than what his first team of "counselors" advised.
benb , 11 minutes ago linkFlynn is as deep state as it gets. He would throw the book at any one of you. Make no mistake. Being a general is a political appointment.
spoonful , 8 minutes ago linkHe's so Deep State that Brennen and Clapper went to Soetoro to get him fired after the election. Flynn was going to rat them out on the treasonous Iran deal. When Obama said no because it was too close to the end of his presidency they then criminally framed Flynn.
You're talking out your butt.
VideoEng_NC , 30 minutes ago linkconcurrr
peippe , 46 minutes ago linkWe're witnessing a judge being compromised. His actions & bold off-topic statements in court earlier this year seems to be the sign. DS Strikes Back.
socialist chum , 43 minutes ago linknever speak to leo without a lawyer representing you.
poor flynn.
AHBL , 41 minutes ago linkFlynn was lied to. Flynn was a 30 year veteran and General. Flynn couldn't imagine his country turning against him like this. None of us could. But with the cabal running our country, it could and did happen. Now we have to stamp out the cockroaches before it's too late.
peippe , 39 minutes ago linkFlynn was also a ******* lobbyist for foreign governments, including Turkey,...without disclosing his advise was paid for. He sold himself out like a whore.
AHBL , 36 minutes ago linkhe had a dinner, at a gala, where foreigners were indeed present. (actually invited & not by Flynn)
Crime? You decide
peippe , 33 minutes ago linkThe **** are you talking about?
"Michael Flynn reportedly filed paperwork on Tuesday for the $530,000 worth of work he did last year that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/08/michael-flynn-admits-turkey-lobbying
Anthraxed , 33 minutes ago linkthought Turkey was our, umm, friend. Also, I did not know the cash disbursements had to be 15 million + ('Biden Sized')
to be forgiven.....or overlooked.
Interesting.
sbin , 24 minutes ago linkTony Pedoesta did the same thing. Yet, somehow was not prosecuted for it...
Soloamber , 48 minutes ago linkNATO Alliance member Turkey? How about a list of Israel friends with benefits. MIC grifters and aipac. Bloated orange imbecile can not fight only tweet.
Impotence on parade
leodogma1 , 50 minutes ago linkThis ***** judge will give him a mouse sentence to protect his own *** . We don't know the half of it . How close is the judge to Obama ? I think we are going to find out .
dibiase , 41 minutes ago linkPresident Trump should step in now and Pardon Gen.Flynn and Roger Stone both trial were fixed unethical and not based on fact and law. In Stones case a radical jury of Demon Rat-Brains were assembled to hand down a guilty verdict.
PrideOfMammon , 7 minutes ago linkStone was bragging he had dirt on Clinton from Assange and when the government called his bs, he lied to them.
Stone is a piece of ****.
sbin , 56 minutes ago linkThey say Dems and other psychos always accuse others of what they themselves are doing. Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation? Operating expenses: 95%.Benevolent aid: 5%. Suck on that for awhile.
hairlessBalls , 35 minutes ago linkFlynn did nothing wrong. Was framed setup and then blackmailed to plead. Who will pay a price. Brennan Comey Strzok? Those who stood with Trump were ruined under false pretenses.
Those who violated the constitution and rule of law are media pundants and undisturbed.
Orange dotard please divert some of your swamp creatures from destroying Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia.
America needs the secret police smashed and held accountable for sedition and treason.
VideoEng_NC , 28 minutes ago linkOh how soon you forget that Flynn commited war crimes in Grenada.
sbin , 12 minutes ago linkThen bring him up on those charges. In court those kinds of leaps are inaddmissable.
Soloamber , 59 minutes ago linkHahahaha Grenada. Reagan's signature military victory. Flynn should be a super hero. Grenada and Panama are the only victories the Pentagon clowns have managed. What should we expect they only get $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year
PopeRatzo , 1 hour ago linkThe minute they let Flynn off he talks and they sure as hell don't want that. They want to drag this out as long as possible and hope for a miracle (Trump gets beat ) or at least time enough for them to bugger off. FISA has known for years they were lied to by the FBI and now it has been confirmed . So why didn't they do anything then or now ? Were they in on it ? How do you draw any other conclusion ?
Spetzco , 28 minutes ago linkRemember that Michael Flynn waived his right to appeal this judge's decision when he plead guilty. This won't be going to a higher court. He's going down and the judge who is sentencing him is PISSED.
Flynn is going to prison. Hillary is not. The sooner you jackoffs accept that, the sooner you'll be able to move on with your lives instead of living out your pitiful existence in bitterness and regret. And no, you won't be doing any civil war. You'll just be angry, your anger will turn inward, and you'll poison yourselves with resentment, living out your days alone. Don't say you weren't warned.
GreatUncle , 15 minutes ago linkThey threatened his son if he did not plead guilty. Of course, to you Dems the means justifies the end. He will be pardoned, and deservedly so.
MurderNeverWasLove , 55 minutes ago linkI don't expect Clinton to go to jail ... committing crimes or not she is untouchable. People may wish it but it will never ever happen she has too much on all the other criminals.
sowhat1929 , 55 minutes ago linkFlynn can ask to withdraw plea, but he's turned down that opportunity three times, so judge might not allow it. Then everything Powell has been doing becomes relevant. Up to this point it's just a bunch of noise, unfortunately.
lwilland1012 , 1 hour ago linkThe house cleaning this country needs is truly astounding. This ******* judge can be swept out with all the other worthless trash
GoldenDonuts , 1 hour ago linkSo let me just be sure I understand this: he is being denied evidence that could prove innocence on a trial related to a guilty plea, which was largely the result of persecution by the FBI and we ALLOW this to happen in America? What has happened to this country?
And the same old same old continues. I really hope that all of these people receive the judgement that they so richly deserve.
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Dec 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Massive win, Colonel, that as far as I know nobody predicted. Not the polls, not the political blogs. But I didn't follow it that closely so that's just a general impression.
My man, Nigel Farage, got squeezed mercilessly. I was looking around the BBC site to find out how mercilessly when I came across a picture of the bete noir of my father's time, Harold Wilson. Wilson was convinced that MI something was out to get him - bugged his office, spread smear stories about him around the press, even a possible coup.
The odd rumour of all this had spread to my corner of the English provinces and I'd always wondered if there was anything in it. So I clicked on the BBC article -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49939123
- and came across this -
" .. A 1987 inquiry concluded the allegations of a security service plot against Wilson were untrue. However, an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories".
Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about.
On another security matter I note with concern above - "Those are Jacobite tribesmen at the top. Some of my ancestors were such as they." I thought so. '15 and '45 caused us a lot of trouble and just in case the tradition remained in your family I'm opening a file. We're very happy with our present Queen, thank you, and we don't want you replacing her with some Stuart relic you might happen to have dug up.
Though I suppose it would only be poetic justice. We've just had a go at toppling your President so why shouldn't you return the compliment and topple Her Majesty.
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Dec 11, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
John Glaser and Christopher Preble have written a valuable study of the history and causes of threat inflation. Here is their conclusion:If war is the health of the state, so is its close cousin, fear. America's foreign policy in the 21st century serves as compelling evidence of that. Arguably the most important task, for those who oppose America's apparently constant state of war, is to correct the threat inflation that pervades national security discourse. When Americans and their policymakers understand that the United States is fundamentally secure, U.S. military activism can be reined in, and U.S. foreign policy can be reset accordingly.
Threat inflation is how American politicians and policymakers manipulate public opinion and stifle foreign policy dissent. When hawks engage in threat inflation, they never pay a political price for sounding false alarms, no matter how ridiculous or over-the-top their warnings may be. They have created their own ecosystem of think tanks and magazines over the decades to ensure that there are ready-made platforms and audiences for promoting their fictions. This necessarily warps every policy debate as one side is permitted to indulge in the most baseless speculation and fear-mongering, and in order to be taken "seriously" the skeptics often feel compelled to pay lip service to the "threat" that has been wildly blown out of proportion. In many cases, the threat is not just inflated but invented out of nothing. For example, Iran does not pose a threat to the United States, but it is routinely cited as one of the most significant threats that the U.S. faces. That has nothing to do with an objective assessment of Iranian capabilities or intentions, and it is driven pretty much entirely by a propaganda script that most politicians and policymakers recite on a regular basis. Take Iran's missile program, for example. As John Allen Gay explains in a recent article , Iran's missile program is primarily defensive in nature:
The reality is they're not very useful for going on offense. Quite the opposite: they're a primarily defensive tool -- and an important one that Iran fears giving up. As the new Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report entitled "Iran Military Power" points out, "Iran's ballistic missiles constitute a primary component of its strategic deterrent. Lacking a modern air force, Iran has embraced ballistic missiles as a long-range strike capability to dissuade its adversaries in the region -- particularly the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia -- from attacking Iran."
Iran's missile force is in fact a product of Iranian weakness, not Iranian strength.
Iran hawks need to portray Iran's missile program inaccurately as part of their larger campaign to exaggerate Iranian power and justify their own aggressive policies. If Iran hawks acknowledged that Iran's missiles are their deterrent against attacks from other states, including our government, it would undercut the rest of their fear-mongering.
Glaser and Preble identify five main sources of threat inflation in the U.S.: 1) expansive overseas U.S. commitments require an exaggerated justification to make those commitments seem necessary for our security; 2) decades of pursuing expansive foreign policy goals have created a class dedicated to providing those justifications and creating the myths that sustain support for the current strategy; 3) there are vested interests that benefit from expansive foreign policy and seek to perpetuate it; 4) a bias in our political system in favor of hawks gives another advantage to fear-mongers; 5) media sensationalism exaggerates dangers from foreign threats and stokes public fear. To those I would add at least one more: threat inflation thrives on the public's ignorance of other countries. When Americans know little or nothing about another country beyond what they hear from the fear-mongers, it is much easier to convince them that a foreign government is irrational and undeterrable or that weak authoritarian regimes on the far side of the world are an intolerable danger.
Threat inflation advances with the inflation of U.S. interests. The two feed off of each other. When far-flung crises and conflicts are treated as if they are of vital importance to U.S. security, every minor threat to some other country is transformed into an intolerable menace to America. The U.S. is extremely secure from foreign threats, but we are told that the U.S. faces myriad threats because our leaders try to make other countries' internal problems seem essential to our national security. Ukraine is at most a peripheral interest of the U.S., but to justify the policy of arming Ukraine we are told by the more unhinged supporters that this is necessary to make sure that we don't have to fight Russia "over here." Because the U.S. has so few real interests in most of the world's conflicts, interventionists have to exaggerate what the U.S. has at stake in order to sell otherwise very questionable and reckless policies. That is usually when we get appeals to showing "leadership" and preserving "credibility," because even the interventionists struggle to identify why the U.S. needs to be involved in some of these conflicts. The continued pursuit of global "leadership" is itself an invitation to endless threat inflation, because almost anything anywhere in the world can be construed as a threat to that "leadership" if one is so inclined. To understand just how secure the U.S. really is, we need to give up on the costly ambition of "leading" the world.
Threat inflation is one of the biggest and most enduring threats to U.S. security, because it repeatedly drives the U.S. to take costly and dangerous actions and to spend exorbitant amounts on unnecessary wars and weapons. We imagine bogeymen that we need to fight, and we waste decades and trillions of dollars in futile and avoidable conflicts, and in the end we are left poorer, weaker, and less secure than we were before.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
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Dec 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
On January 6 2017 this author concluded :
When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump.
The ultimate aim of the cabal is to kick him out of office and have a reliable replacement, like the Vice-President elect Pence, take over. Should that not be possible it is hoped that the delegitimization will make it impossible for Trump to change major policy trajectories especially in foreign policy. A main issue here is the reorientation of the U.S. military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct confrontation with main powers like Russia and China.
...
A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA.
One part of the still ongoing deligitimization campaign was the FBI investigation of alleged Russian connections of four members of the Trump election campaign.
The Inspector General of the U.S. Justice Department Michael Horowitz has investigated the FBI operation against the election campaign of Donald Trump. Yesterday he published his report, Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation (pdf). It is 480 pages long and quite thorough but unfortunately very limited in its scope.
Horowitz finds that the FBI was within the law when it opened the investigation but that the FBI's applications to the FISA court, which decides if the FBI can spy on someone's communications, were based on lies and utterly flawed.
Your host unfortunately lacked the time so far to read more than the executive summary. But others have pointed out some essential findings.
Matt Taibbi remarks :
The Guardian headline reads: " DOJ Internal watchdog report clears FBI of illegal surveillance of Trump adviser ."
If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a "clearing" of the FBI, never clear me of anything. ...
Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz's conclusion that there was no evidence of "political bias or improper motivation" in the FBI's probe of Donald Trump's Russia contacts, an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had "authorized purpose" to conduct....
However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose "serious" procedural problems and omissions of "significant information" in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president).
...
There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong. Some key points:
The so-called "Steele dossier" was, actually, crucial to the FBI's decision to seek secret surveillance of Page. ...
...
The "Steele dossier" was "Internet rumor," and corroboration for the pee tape story was "zero." ...
John Solomon finds :
Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is true.The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page starting in October 2016.
A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: "Supporting document shows that the factual assertion is inaccurate."
For those who don't speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official file.
The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with.
The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors.
That the dossier was mere dreck was quite obvious to any sober person who read it when it was first published . Here is what we wrote about it at that time:
The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous compatriot that two anonymous sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claimed to have heard somewhere that something happened in the Kremlin.They assert that Trump was supported and directed by Putin himself five years ago while even a year ago no one would have bet a penny on Trump gaining any political significant position or even the presidency.
There is a lot more of such nonsense in these new Hitler diaries. It is bonkers from a to z.
Those who thought otherwise should question their judgment.
It is now claimed that the FBI is exculpated because the Horowitz report did not find "political bias or improper motivation". But that omits the fact that at least four high ranking people in the FBI and Justice Department who were involved in the case were found to be politically biased and were removed from their positions.
It also omits that the scope of Horowitz's investigation was limited to the Justice Department. He was not able to investigate the CIA and its former director John Brennan who was alleging Russia-Trump connections months before the FBI investigation started:
Contrary to a general impression that the FBI launched the Trump-Russia conspiracy probe, Brennan pushed it to the bureau – breaking with CIA tradition by intruding into domestic politics: the 2016 presidential election. He also supplied suggestive but ultimately false information to counterintelligence investigators and other U.S. officials.The current CIA director Gina Haspel was CIA station chief in London during that time and while several of the entrapment attempts of Trump campaign staff by the FBI investigation happened. Horowitz spoke with neither of them.
Peter Van Buren concludes :
The current Horowitz Report, read alongside his previous report on how the FBI played inside the 2016 election vis-a-vis Clinton, should leave no doubt that the Bureau tried to influence the election of a president and then delegitimize him when he won. It wasn't the Russians; it was us.That is correct, but the whole conspiracy was even deeper. It was not the FBI which initiated the case.
My hunch is still that the FBI investigation was a case of parallel construction which is often used to build a legitimate case after a suspicion was found by illegitimate means. In this case it was John Brennan who in early 2016 contacted the head of the British GCHQ electronic interception service and asked him to spy on the Trump campaign. GHCQ then claimed that something was found that was deemed suspicious :
That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs.The FBI was tipped off on the issue and on July 31 2016 started an investigation to construct a parallel legal case. It send out British and U.S. agents to entrap Trump campaign members. It used the obviously fake Steele dossier to gain FISA court judgments that allowed it to spy on the campaign. Downing Street was informed throughout the whole affair. A day after Trump's inauguration the UK's then Prime Minister Theresa May fired GHCQ chief Robert Hannigan.
One still open question is to what extend then President Barack Obama was involved in the affair.
There is another ongoing investigation by U.S. Prosecutor John Durham. That investigation is not limited to the Justice Department but will involve all agencies and domestic as well as foreign sources. Durham has the legal rights to declassify whatever is needed and he can indict persons should he find that they committed a crime. His report will hopefully go much deeper than the already horrendous stuff Horowitz delivered.
(This is a Moon of Alabama fundraiser week. Please consider to support our work .)
Posted by b on December 11, 2019 at 16:16 UTC | Permalink
Antoinetta III , Dec 11 2019 16:27 utc | 1
Do we have any idea when the Durham report will be coming out?casey , Dec 11 2019 16:30 utc | 2Antoinetta III
Anyone taking bets on Durham/Barr making indictments in this mess? My guess is a whole lot of horse trading is going on behind the scenes now, as in, "I'll trade you a censure for all potential indictments going down the memory hole."Kabobyak , Dec 11 2019 16:54 utc | 3Typical dog and pony show which will change nothing relating to interventionist foreign policy and the new cold war with Russia. Too many saw benefits from the corruption in Ukraine to dig deep there; the Bidens were just the most blatant, Lindsey Graham and others from both parties were involved so don't expect much from the Senate hearings. The bipartisan major goals are a fait accompli; universal acceptance that Russia worked to undermine our elections (and to destroy our "Democracy") and are thus an enemy we must fight, and it's universally accepted by all that we MUST provide Ukraine with Javelin missiles and other lethal aid to fight "Russian Aggression" (with little mention that even Obama balked at that reckless option). All of these proceedings are great distractions, but the weapons of war will not be diminished.c1ue , Dec 11 2019 17:08 utc | 4@Kabobyak #3jayc , Dec 11 2019 17:10 utc | 5Very possibly, but the Afghanistan papers have made an impact on some people: American Conservative editor is outraged, including militating against his children serving in the military and taxpayers funding it
Another candidate for Steele's "primary source" is Stefan Halper. Svetlana Lhokova suggested that this past Sunday.Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 17:12 utc | 6Unfortuneately, few will question the findings of these investigations or consider the possibility that the investigations themselves are misdirection/cover-up.james , Dec 11 2019 17:24 utc | 7Repeating my comment from yesterday on the Open Thread :
IMO the Lavrov-Pompeo presser is notable mostly for Lavrov's discussion of Russiagate (about 6 minutes in).Lavrov tells us that the Russian's repeatedly sought to clarify their noninterference by publishing correspondence - which the Trump Administration didn't respond to. And he actual mentions McCarthyism!
Wait, wot?
Yeah, during the worst of the Russiagate accusations, Trump wouldn't do things that would've helped to prove that Russiagate was a farce!!
So, during the election, Trump called on Putin to publish Hillary's emails (the very act of making such a request is likely illegal because at the time it was known that her emails contained highly classified info) but he wouldn't accept Russia's publication of exculpatory info about Russiagate?!?!
This would cause cognitive dissonance galore in an Americans that hear it - so one can be sure that it will not be reported.
Occam's razor: CIA-MI6, with approval of US Deep State (Clintons, Bush, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, etc.), meddled to elect Trump and pointed fingers at Russia to initiate a new McCarthyism.
Meanwhile in bizarroland (aka USA), Barr says Russiagate is a fantasy based on FBI "bad faith" - yet Pompeo still presses on with the "Russia meddled" bullshit.
!!
thanks b... i like your example in the comment - ''those who thought otherwise should question their judgment''.. good example!Kabobyak , Dec 11 2019 17:27 utc | 8i am a bit concerned like @ 2 casey, that most of this is going to go down the memory hole and there will be that made in america stamp on it - ''no accountability''... i wish i was wrong, but getting worked up at the idea anyone is going to be held accountable for any actions of the usa, or the insiders playing the usa, is clearly a fools game at this point.. all i mostly see is the needed collapse and waiting for that to happen..
@c1ue #4james , Dec 11 2019 17:27 utc | 9Thanks for that, there are definitely cracks in the armor and we should promote that narrative as you do in your link. Tulsi Gabbard has also expanded the awareness, hopefully she will make the upcoming debates despite strong efforts to silence her. I'll try more to focus on the positive!
@ 6 jr.. there is a press release on all what was said here for anyone interested..evilempire , Dec 11 2019 17:44 utc | 10lavrov quote and etc. etc.. "We suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all suspicions that are baseless, let us publish this closed-channel correspondence starting from October 2016 till November 2017 so it would all become very clear to many people. However, regrettably, this administration refused to do so. But I'd like to repeat once again we are prepared to do that, and to publish the correspondence that took place through that channel would clear many matters up, I believe. Nevertheless, we hope that the turbulence that appeared out of thin air will die down, just like in 1950s McCarthyism came to naught, and there'll be an opportunity to go back to a more constructive cooperation."
I continue to believe that the FBI and Horowitz perjured themselves in the FISA report. To correct a mistake in a previous post I made, I believe they lied when the claimed the Steele Dossier was not a predicate for opening crossfire hurricane. How can the Steele dossier not be instrumental in the opening of the investigation when bruce ohr's wife nellie ohr was working at fusion gps when bruce ohr met with steele to discuss the dirty dossier.Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 18:19 utc | 12In other words, the FBI was concocting Operation Crossfire Hurricane prior to the time they had any knowledge of the phony Papadopoulus predicate that the russians were proferring the clinton emails to the trump campaign.
The FISA report claim that Operation Crossfire Hurricane was predicated solely on the Papadopolous allegations is therefore a lie. There was, in fact, no real predicate for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. The predications cited were all fictions and inventions fabricated in a conspiracy between MI6(the FFC or
friendly foreign country cited in the Horowitz report), the DOJ and the FBI. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was a massive Psyop from its inception.
james @9Piotr Berman , Dec 11 2019 18:28 utc | 13What major publications have picked up this info from the State Dept PR? Which of them are questioning why Trump didn't agree to let the Russians publish the exonerating information? And how many of those are linking this strange fact to other strange facts and thus raising troubling questions about the 2016 election?
<> <> <> <> <> <>
It's not just that Trump refused to publish exculpatory material. Anyone that's been reading my comments (and/or my blog) knows that Trump also:
- hired Manafort - whose work for pro-Russian candidates in Ukraine had drawn the ire of CIA - despite Manafort's having no recent experience with US elections;- helped Pelosi to be elected Speaker of the House by inviting her to attend a White House meeting about his border wall (along with Chuck Schumer) prior to the House vote to elect a Speaker.
- initiated Ukrainegate by talking with Ukraine's President about investigating an announced candidate - he didn't have to do this(!) he could've let subordinates work behind the scenes .
And then there's a set of suspicious activity that is difficult to explain, such as: ...
- Kissinger's having called for MAGA in August 2014 (Trump announced his campaign 10 months later and he was the ONLY MAGA candidate and the ONLY populist in the Republican primary) ;- London as a nexus for the US 2016 campaign (Cambridge Analytica; GPS Fusion; Halper, etc.) ;
- Hillary's making mistakes in the 2016 campaign that no seasoned politician would make;
- the settling of scores via entrapments of Flynn, Manafort, and Wikileaks/Assange (painted as a hostile intelligence agency and Russian agent).
All of these and more support the conclusion that CIA-MI6 elected MAGA Trump and initiated Russiagate.
!!
The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous asserted compatriot what two anonymous sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claim to have heard somewhere that something happened in the Kremlin. <-- Perhaps it is too much to add that the entire conversation happen in a pub, like an eyewitness account of a trout caught by an angler that was larger than a tiger shark [the trout was so large, not the angler].Really?? , Dec 11 2019 18:31 utc | 14
James #11karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 18:38 utc | 15I am a great fan of Dmitri Orlov and have just read a large portion of his linked post.
What I do not see Orlov doing is taking into account--in his takedown of "scientific" models---evidence of global warming/change such as *actual* observations of *actual, current* phenomena that are being measured today, such as the condition of the world's coral reefs; the rate of melting of permafrost and release of methane gas; the melting of Greenland (and other) glaciers and release of fresh water into the oceans; acidification of oceans; and quite a lot of evidence for sea level rise, such as saltwater intrusion into freshwater swamps, aquifers, etc.
More can be gleaned by the manner in which BigLie Media spin the investigation's results. At The Hill , Jonathon Turley makes that clear in the first paragraph:Michael Droy , Dec 11 2019 18:42 utc | 16"The analysis of the report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz greatly depends, as is often the case, on which cable news channel you watch. Indeed, many people might be excused for concluding that Horowitz spent 476 pages to primarily conclude one thing, which is that the Justice Department acted within its guidelines in starting its investigation into the 2016 campaign of President Trump."
The further he goes the worse it gets for the Ds. And he's 100% correct about the biases present in reporting about the Report. Remarks made by Lavrov at the presser were likely done prior to anyone from Russia's delegation having digested any of the Report. What I found important was the following revelation by Lavrov:
"Let me remind you that at the time of the first statements on this topic, which was on the eve of the 2016 US presidential election, we used the communications channel that linked back then Moscow and the Obama administration in Washington to ask our US partners on numerous occasions whether these allegations that emerged in October 2016 and persisted until Donald Trump's inauguration could be addressed. The reply never came. There was no response whatsoever to all our proposals when we said: look, if you suspect us, let's sit down and talk, just put your facts on the table. All this continued after President Trump's inauguration and the appointment of a new administration. We proposed releasing the correspondence through this closed communications channel for the period from October 2016 until January 2017 in order to dispel all this groundless suspicion. This would have clarified the situation for many. Unfortunately, this time it was the current administration that refused to do so. Let me reiterate that we are ready to disclose to the public the exchanges we had through this channel . I think that this would set many things straight. Nevertheless we expect the turbulence that appeared out of thin air to calm down little by little, just as McCarthyism waned in the 1950s, so that we can place our cooperation on a more constructive footing." [My Emphasis]
Lavrov on Mueller Report: "It contains no confirmation of any collusion." End of story. But we do have all this compiled evidence within our communications we're ready to publish is the USA
agrees.
The Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) organization has yet to publish anything about the report. However, Matt Taibbi often writes for that outlet, so his reporting at Rolling Stone ought to be seen as a proxy FAIR report.
Great stuff as ever. How useful is it that Skripal is Unavailable but not Dead? For example does it affect redaction of material linked to him?Jon Carter , Dec 11 2019 18:59 utc | 17Now that we know Carter Page was working for the CIA as an informant in 2016, is it reasonable to speculate that Page was planted in the Trump campaign by the CIA?GeorgeV , Dec 11 2019 19:11 utc | 18The Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Micheal Horowitz's report on the move to delegitimize the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is clear proof of the massive rot that lies at the heart of the US' political system. If this matter is whitewashed over by the MSM, then one more step will have been taken to a violent and bloody revolution in the US of A.JR , Dec 11 2019 19:41 utc | 20By now Steele's credibility is zero. Time to revisit Steele's involvement with the debunked "Russia bought the soccer World Champion games", the Litvinenko polonium poisening and the Skripal novichok poisening. The timing of the Skripal matter deserves some scrutiny in relation to Skripal possibly being Steele's source for the infamous Trump dossier. There might be a motive hidden there.Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 19:44 utc | 21Jon Carter @17:uncle tungsten , Dec 11 2019 20:04 utc | 22... is it reasonable to speculate that Page was planted in the Trump campaign by the CIA?And then there's Simon Bracey Lane in the Sanders campaign as described here: British Spies Infiltrated Bernie Sanders' Campaign?
Plus we have the strange goings-on of Halper and Mifsud as well as Gina Haspel in London also.
!!
karlof1 #15S , Dec 11 2019 20:25 utc | 24Thank you for posting Lavrov's words. Between those words and the IG report the kabuki farce is revealed. Why was Trump ignoring the Russian offer you might ask. Because it suited him to have this nonsense dominate the news cycle, you might conclude. Trump and Comey and Brennan deserve each other.
Lavrov's words condemn the three of them.
Twitter account @Techno_Fog lists MSM shills who assured the public the FISA warrant on Page was not based on Steele dossier (h/t Zero Hedge).james , Dec 11 2019 20:26 utc | 25just like 9-11... this is an inside job... does anyone really think the truth is going to come to light in any of it?? i'm still with @ 2 caseys view...karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 20:48 utc | 27uncle tungsten @22--ben , Dec 11 2019 21:03 utc | 28Thanks for your reply! Yes, agreed, and I'd add Obama and Clinton. Lavrov also held another presser at the conclusion of his visit that provides additional info not covered in the first. The following is one I thought important:
"Question: The day before, US Congress agreed on a draft military budget, which includes possible sanctions against Nord Stream-2 and Turkish Stream. Have you covered this topic? The Congress sounds very determined. How seriously will the new restrictions affect the completion of our projects?
"Sergey Lavrov: In my opinion, Congress sounds rather obsessed with destroying our relations. It continues pursuing the policy started by the Obama administration. As I mentioned, we are used to this kind of attack. We know how to respond to them. I assure you that neither Nord Stream-2 nor Turkish Stream will be halted."
I must emphatically agree with Lavrov's opinion and was very pleased he answered forthrightly. What seems quite clear is the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate, with bipartisan Congressional backing. That she lost didn't stop the anti-Russian wheel from being turned. So, logic tells us to discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've written here why I think that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance made reality by that policy goal. That a supermajority in Congress remain deluded is clearly a huge problem, and those continuing to vote for the War Budget need to be removed.
b posted, in part;"When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump."karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:07 utc | 29It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO.
This tweet sums up things nicely in ways BigLie Media won't:ben , Dec 11 2019 21:18 utc | 30
- "Let me get this straight:
- "A Congress with a 9% approval rate
- "Is trying to remove a president with a 52% approval rate that 63 million Americans voted for
- "As a part of an impeachment process that 51% of voters don't want
- "All while claiming to be fighting 'for the people'"
With only 9% approval, it ought to be easy to toss out most Congresscritters, excepting that part of the Senate not up for reelection.
Jrabbit @ 12 said; "All of these and more support the conclusion that CIA-MI6 elected MAGA Trump and initiated Russiagate."YEP!!!!!
Paul Damascene , Dec 11 2019 21:24 utc | 32
Karlof1 @ 29--james , Dec 11 2019 21:25 utc | 33Are you aware of any means by which a member of congress or of a congressional committee can be impeached or otherwise censured for the misconduct of official duties? That would at least be Schiff...
Posted by: Paul Damascene | Dec 11 2019 21:24 utc | 32
@ 31 john.. i didn't know i had to read the orlov article to say what i did to you!! your post @11 never make any internet link to orlov... what am i missing? does this mean i can only speak with you after i have read another orlov article? lol...james , Dec 11 2019 21:27 utc | 34i see it now.. my comment still stands though... people seem especially pugnacious today..William Gruff , Dec 11 2019 21:27 utc | 35"It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO." --ben @28karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:30 utc | 36Ah, but that would be legitimate deligitimization, like attacking his actual policies. Those are rocks that would break the Democrats' own windows as well as Trump's.
29 Cont'd--ben , Dec 11 2019 21:40 utc | 37And Congress continues to alienate allies :
"So far on Dec 11:
1. Senate Foreign Relations Comm passed Turkey sanctions bill
2. Pentagon Chief warned Turkey moving away NATO
3. U.S. lawmakers introduce legislation to curb Turkey's nuclear weapon obtainment"
Finally, the pretense of being nice to Turkey has come to an end. It will now intensify its looking East, and pursue its national interests. IMO, the Eastern Med's energy issues will now become a major headache.
karlof @ 29: The head Dems know their pushing the " Russia did it"meme is weak, but the PTBkarlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:41 utc | 38insist on it, to keep the MIC funds flowing.
The "no-brainer" charges should be; "Obstruction" and "Emoluments" violations. Charges the public can grasp.
What happens if you, or any average person, ignores a summons to appear? They are arrested.
Funneling govt. funds for personal gain is a violation of law, if you are POTUS.
These are violations average Americans can grasp, not the current circus of he said, she said, going on in D.C. lately.
Guess my point is, this hearings are built to fail, because most of our so-called leaders like things the way they are. The rape of the workings classes will continue.
Paul Damascene @32--Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 22:01 utc | 40Yes. The impeachment process is the same as for Trump. Censuring is much easier but doubt it will occur as too many are deserving. We're seeing the reason Congressional elections are held every two years--vote 'em out if they're no good!
karlof1 @27:karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 22:08 utc | 41... the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate ...
I don't agree that the baton would be passed to Clinton. The Deep State uses the two-party system as a device. It's not tied to partisan concerns. If the Deep State and the establishment really wanted Clinton elected, they would've made that happen. Few expected Trump to win and few would've been outraged if he had lost. Yet he won. Against all odds. Furthermore, Clinton wasn't the MAGA candidate as called for by Kissinger - Trump was. And he was from the beginning of his candidacy.
Russiagate was based on suspicions of a populist that was compromised by Russia. Hillary has too much baggage to play populist or nationalist - including Bill's involvement with Epstein.
Also, you're forgetting the set ups of Manafort, Flynn, and Wikileaks/Assange - which were important parts of Russiagate and also a convenient way of settling scores. These set-ups required the Russiagate-tainted candidate (Trump) to win.
And Trump's beating Hillary makes him the classic come-from-behind hero - giving Trump a certain legitimacy that an establishment candidate wouldn't have. That's important when contemplating taking the country to war in the near future.
It's strange to me that people can think that Hillary was the 'chosen candidate', and be OK with that but find a possible selection of a different candidate (Trump, as it turns out) to be outrageous and inconceivable.
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... with bipartisan Congressional backing . That she lost didn't stop the anti-Russian wheel from being turned.
Since the Deep State and the Establishment desired an effort to restore the Empire, they would turn to whomever could most effectively accomplish that task.
Once again: It didn't have to be Hillary that was selected. In fact, for many reasons (that I've previously expressed) Hillary would have been a poor choice.
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So, logic tells us to discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've written here why I think that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people ...
FSD is US Mil policy, not a political goal. It states that US Mil will strive to have superiority in weapons and capability in every sphere of combat.
Politically, FSD is just one of several means to an end. IMO that end is the maintenance and expansion of the Anglo-Zionist Empire (aka New World Order).
Also, your dominance theory doesn't answer the question of WHY NOW? (more on that below)
... regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance ...
Firstly, US Deep State believes that it is possible. And I personally don't buy the notion that Russia and China are fated to prevail. If that were obvious, then the moa bar would have no patrons.
Secondly (and again), WHY NOW? The Sino-Russo Alliance was long in the making. Why did USA suddenly take note?
It's Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 that provides the answer. In this Op-Ed, Kissinger calls for a restored US Empire that is essentially Trump's MAGA. Kissinger is writing immediately after the Donbas rebels have won. The Russians refused to heed Kissinger's advice (to back down) and it has become apparent that Russia's joining the West is no longer an inevitability as the US elite had assumed.
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I've written many times of Kissinger's Op-Ed and of indications that the Deep State selected MAGA Trump to be President while also initiating a new McCarthyism. Why is it STILL so difficult to believe a theory that makes so much sense?
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ben @37--Cortes , Dec 11 2019 22:34 utc | 43Yes, the status quo is very generous to the Current Oligarchy and its tools, but not so for the vast public majority which is clamoring for change. IMO, much can be learned from the UK election tomorrow, of which there's been very little discussion here despite its importance. I suggest following the very important developments from the past few days at Criag Murray's Twitter and at his website , the linked article being a scoop of sorts.
Also harder to follow but important as well are ballot initiatives within the states. This site has current listing . I just looked over those for California where there are a few good ones, but the threshold for signatures is getting higher, close to one million are now needed in CA.
Lavrov's comments about the offers to open up normally closed communications really only highlight two obvious issues:AshenLight , Dec 11 2019 22:38 utc | 44
- The previous US Administration had no interest in shutting off the oxygen to the "Trump = Moscow's Man" campaign; and
- The current US Administration cannot afford to be perceived as receiving help in this matter from the country he is alleged to be beholden to for his election.
@ Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 11 2019 21:07 utc | 29karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 22:39 utc | 45With only 9% approval, it ought to be easy to toss out most Congresscritters, excepting that part of the Senate not up for reelection.You'd think so, but somehow the numbers pretty much reverse when these same people consider their own rep, and the incumbency reelection rate is shockingly high (haven't looked recently but IIRC it has hovered around 90% for decades). Apparently it is amazingly easy to convince the masses that their guy is the one good apple in the bunch.
Jon Schwartz reminds me why I don't stop and peruse magazine stands anymore. Seeing the words and this picture would've sparked lots of unpleasant language:steven t johnson , Dec 11 2019 22:42 utc | 46"The best part of Michelle Obama explaining she shares the same values as George W. Bush is she was being interviewed on network TV by Bush's daughter. There's nothing more American than our ruling class making us watch them discuss how great they all are."
And the escalation wasn't rigged for Clinton to initiate--yeah, sure, whatever the rabbit says.
Until there is some comparison of how the FISA court usually works, none of this chatter means a thing. Violations of Woods procedures and assertions not supported by documents are SOP. The FISA court is always a joke.Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 23:08 utc | 48Delgeitimizing Trump, reversing the election, all simple-minded drviel, as only nitwits see Trump as anything but the loser.
Jen, that's a really interesting post. Thanks.Kabobyak , Dec 12 2019 0:45 utc | 51Skripal knows something that US-UK either 1) don't want the Russians to know OR 2) don't want ANYONE to know.
What could that be? 1) That Steele dossier is bullshit? We know that. 2) That Steele dossier was meant to be bullshit ? Well, that raises a whole host of questions, doesn't it?
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Good chance Steele had little to do with writing the Dossier. "Simpson-Ohr Dossier", anyone? Steele was needed as a credible looking intelligence officer with Russia ties and a past working relationship with US Intel, as cover to sell to FBI, FISA Court, and the public (meeting with Isikoff, Yahoo News story).daffyDuct , Dec 12 2019 2:26 utc | 56Glenn Simpson and wife Mary Jacoby had written articles for the WSJ in 2007 and 2008 with a script and language similar to the Dossier. Devin Nunes seems to believe this scenario, and it is discussed in detail in books by Dan Bongino and Lee Smith, among others.
c1ue @4ben , Dec 12 2019 3:24 utc | 59The Afghanistan report outlines a *massive fraud*. $14 billion/month, 90% of the world's opium, no "progress", oh, and lying to Congress for two decades.
OT, but this seems to be going around..Eh?ben , Dec 12 2019 4:47 utc | 62physchoh @ 60; The difference, at least in my mind, is that, the "Russia did it" meme, is the weakest of all cases against DJT. Corbyn, on the other hand, may actually be hurt by the bogus charges. IMO, what this shows is coordination between the elites to bring down a progressive in the UK, who fancies public control over major finances instead of private concerns.Piotr Berman , Dec 12 2019 5:03 utc | 63Fox News, now: Biden blames staff, says nobody 'warned' him son's Ukraine job could raise conflict. In a TV comedy Seinfeld, one of the main characters, George, is a compulsive liar with a knack of getting in trouble. Sometimes he has a job. Final scene of one of those jobs:evilempire , Dec 12 2019 5:34 utc | 64
- Boss: "You have been seen after hours making sex with the cleaning lady on the top of your desk."
- George (after a measured look at his boss): "If I was only told that this kind of things is being frown upon..." [and she had cleaned the desk both before AND after!]
I have theory about why Horowitz did not bias in the FBI. The definition of bias is to harbor a deeply negative feeling that clouds one's judgement about a person or subject. However, the conspirators' judgement was not clouded in this case. Their negative feelings focused their intent to destroy the object ofPerimetr , Dec 12 2019 6:03 utc | 65their feeling. The precise term for this is malice.
So Horowitz was technically correct when he did not find bias. What he might have been reluctant to spell out is that he did find malice.
Re Really?? | Dec 11 2019 18:31 utc | 14 and AshenLight | Dec 11 2019 19:36 utc | 19I agree with you. Orlov is a brilliant, insightful analyst, who is also very funny. But he is off the mark with his dismissal of global warming and also with his endorsement of nuclear power. The immense amounts of waste from uranium mining all the way to hundreds of thousands of tons of high-level waste in spent fuel pools pose a huge threat to current and future generations . . . like the next 3000 generations of humans (and all other forms of life) that will have to deal with this. Mankind has never built anything that has lasted a fraction of the 100,000 years required for the isolation of high-level wastes from the biosphere. Take a look at Into Eternity which is a great documentary on the disposal of nuclear waste in Finland.
Orlov's analysis is superficial, unfortunately, in these areas.
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Dec 10, 2019 | www.nytimes.com
Opinion With Trump, All Roads Lead to MoscowMonday's congressional hearing and the inspector general's report tell a similar story.
By Jesse Wegman Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.
When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected.
That's the most important lesson from the two big events that played out Monday on Capitol Hill -- the House Judiciary Committee's hearings on President Trump's impeachment and the release of the report on the origins of the F.B.I.'s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
One of these involved the 2016 election. The other involves the 2020 election. Both tell versions of the same story: Mr. Trump depends on, and welcomes, Russian interference to help him win the presidency. That was bad enough when he did it in 2016, openly calling for Russia to hack into his opponent's emails -- which Russians tried to do that same day . But he was only a candidate then. Now that Mr. Trump is president, he is wielding the immense powers of his office to achieve the same end.
That is precisely the type of abuse of power that the founders were most concerned about when they created the impeachment power, and it's why Democratic leaders in the House are pressing ahead with such urgency on their inquiry. They are trying to ensure that the 2020 election, now less than a year away, is not corrupted by the president of the United States, acting in league with a foreign power. "The integrity of our next election is at stake," said Representative Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "Nothing could be more urgent."
On Monday morning, lawyers for the Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees presented the clearest and most comprehensive narrative yet of President Trump's monthslong shakedown of the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for Mr. Trump's personal political benefit. They explained in methodical detail how the president withheld a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial, congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine, all in an effort to get Mr. Zelensky to announce two investigations -- one into Mr. Trump's political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, and another into Ukraine's supposed interference in the 2016 election.
David Leonhardt helps you make sense of the news -- and offers reading suggestions from around the web -- with commentary every weekday morning.
Who would benefit from these announcements? Mr. Trump, who believes his re-election prospects are threatened most by Mr. Biden, and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, who has been working for years to make Ukraine the fall guy for his own interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Putin has not fooled serious people, like those in the American intelligence community who determined that his government alone was responsible for meddling on Mr. Trump's behalf . But he has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices by faithfully parroting Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press.
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sdavidc9 Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut 12m ago
Republicans are in lawyer mode, advocating for Trump as if he were their client. Lawyers make the best case they can for their clients. It helps if they believe in the case, but it also helps to know the case's weaknesses so they can avoid them. The best lawyers can do both at the same time. Republicans are called on by the Constitution to exit lawyer mode and enter juror mode (which is, or should be, similar to why-did-this-aircraft-crash mode). So far, they are not heeding this call. From all appearances, they are mouthing the words of the Constitution while avoiding or refusing to hear or understand them. They took an oath to support the Constitution, but they are deaf to its call, or have moved to a place beyond understanding it.Mark Larsen Cambria, CA 26m agoThe issue of whether to impeach was made by the President when he engaged in an abuse of his office for personal gain and then obstructed Congress' oversight function. We all understand the political downside arising from an acquittal in the Senate but that interest needs to be secondary to doing the right thing. On these facts, the decision representatives must make of whether to impeach really is no decision at all. Just do the right thing.Twg NV 26m agoWhen Senator John McCain died, he scripted his own funeral as a full bore defense against Trumpian Nationalism, and as an admonishment against a GOP too willing to sell the soul of our nation out to a cultist repudiation of objective fact, truth, and Constitutional order. McCain was a controversial maverick –a person I both admired and disliked in equal proportion. But there is one thing I will always admire him for: his final letter to the nation. It was a warning! He blew a golden bugle to sound the alarm against those entities both within and without our nation who wish to do our democratic republic harm. McCain, whether you agreed with the premise of the Vietnam war or not, was an American hero who served his country and his fellow soldiers with incontrovertible valor and love. President Donald Trump has no concept of what that dedication and sacrifice entails – and sadly, neither do many of the GOP members who continue to lie and make excuses for a president who is clearly abusing his office for personal gain. McCain characterized Trump's actions in Helsinki as an unfathomable 'abasement of the U.S. presidency.' All I can say is the GOP sure ain't the party of my father who fought in WWII against fascism and autocracy. It aggrieves me to no end to witness what too many members of Congress have become: tyrants toward the very meaning of American democracy. God save us from our own duplicity.Jagmont Rousel Fresburg, Ca. 12m ago@Twg Well said, and though I sometimes did not agree with McCain on matters of policy, I wish he were still with us, hopefully to show his fellow republicans what integrity looks like, and what America is supposed to be about. The Republican party I have known and respected is alas, like Senator McCain, no longer with us.Consiglieri NYC 34m agoAmericans have to realize that the whole world is mocking us, and that doesn't necesarily inspire respect. That cold be dangerous. Many medical professionals have noticed a decay in the mental abilities of the president, and certain abnormalities. It would be wise to suggest to the family that maybe the best way forward, with minimal losses would be to motivate a retirement. That would be face saving for them, and save the country from a bitter impeachment spectacle that would not be positive for the USA.Jennifer Francois Holland, Michigan 1h agoI'm waiting for Trump's financial info to be released. There's something in there he doesn't even want his base to know . I think the logical conclusion is that whatever financials DJT has hidden do indeed lead to Moscow. Actually, all of this is very, very alarming. Does Putin have a political asset planted here? Y or N I wish the answer was no and that we had a different President. Can we as a nation hold things together when our leader wants to tear us apart?AL NY 1h agoAll roads lead to the highest bidder(s). 21st century America in the era of Citizens United. Market pricing and the government is open for transactional business domestic and international. Alternate realities per GRU/FOX/GOP misinformation. Combine foreign money carefully grooming an in-need Trump, and a party worshipping money and you have a perfect storm removing any sense of civic duty. Hundreds of years to build and unwound in a few decades, the breathtaking and tragic fall of greatness and hope in our lifetime. It's not fiction, and every day I have to check if it's really happening, and shockingly it is.DO5 Minneapolis 1h agoThere was no Russian meddling, only Ukraine who meddled in 2016 and they are still at it. Listening to the Judiciary Committee hearings, it seems that the Russians have hacked into the Republican Party servers and are sending talking points to Republicans who are defending the indefensible president.We'll always have Paris Sydney, Australia 1h agoAt some point, Republicans have to ask themselves which is better for their party and the country. Slavish devotion to Trump, or losing an election and leaving Democrats a mess to clean up, as in 1932 and 2008?Mike S. Eugene, OR 2h agoBlock witnesses from testifying, then say that the hearing is incomplete. Romney told America at the Republican Convention in 2012 that Russia was our biggest enemy, DJT wanted them to help Republicans win in 2016, said he believed Putin in 2018, and wants to convince us that it was really the Ukraine in 2019. The House has to impeach, even if politically it may be a bad move, because it is the right thing to do; indeed, the very actions I've seen in the past several weeks has given me glimmers of hope for the country.Federalist California 2h agoTrump will be reelected for the reason that the Russian intelligence agencies are still able to hack our election results, because Trump has blocked fixing the weaknesses. That is what happens when a Manchurian candidate is elected and then allowed to obstruct justice. It is not clear the US will survive Trump. One key thing he did was arrange to have the teams at DHS that watch for smuggled nuclear bombs were stood down and disbanded. See the report in the LA Times last July "Trump administration has gutted programs aimed at detecting weapons of mass destruction".David Rochester 2h agoI don't suppose a constructed transcript of Trump's meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow will be offered up as a token of our leader's transparency.Markymark San Francisco 2h agoIt's clear now that AG William Barr isn't interested in enforcing the rule of law with fellow republicans, and especially the president. How can there be no recourse when an attorney general completely sells out to a criminal president? Can the employees of the Justice Dept hold a vote of no confidence in the AG? Can 10,000 attorneys nationwide express the same? The prospect of Trump and Barr running roughshod over the rule of law for another year is truly frightening.Aluetian Contemplation 2h ago65,845,063 voters knew clearly who this man was from the beginning and voted for what would have been a better now and future. It was never any secret. 62,980,160 voters also knew clearly who this man was and voted for him anyway. If the Democrats can ensure that we have a fair election in 2020. I'm confident they will win the majority in the house and senate and retake the White House and the end game for Trump will be jail. The problem is, he might not be the only one who's crimes come to light and I suspect a good lot of the GOP are threatening and blackmailing each other to hold the line. If there's any good men or women left in the GOP, your country and history are calling you.Edwin a physician, scientist and realist 2h agoIt has easy to predict Trump's next move for the last 3 years. Just ask, "What would both benefit Trump, and benefit Putin?" Trump supporters = Putin supporters.Kevin CO 2h agoDo you know the American people are fed up with the discourse of all politicians. The republicans are fed up with any decency for the republic. The democrats are fed up with the republicans not facing the common sense of a exec not capable of being the President of the United states. I as a person am fed up with a political system that is not working for all people, just a select few. It's time too have term limits for all positions in gov't. That means all people that serve the people whether it be judges, senators or congressmen/women. It's time to find common sense again in our society as a whole society. We on this earth are all HUMAN.Eben Spinoza 2h agoUnfortunately their are serious problems with term limits. Just consider yourself in the role of a Congressional Representative limited to 4 terms. You know that in 8 years, you'll be be back on the job market. You can selflessly work for the public and damage your ability to get a job or tend to people who can hire you after you leave office. You're rational. Which future would you pick?REBCO FORT LAUDERDALE FL 2h agoTrump needs to keep Putin happy lest he unleash with all the damaging info he has collected on Trump and his financial crooked deals with Russians over decades. THe Russian mob reports to Putin as a former KGB agent he knows how to collect compromat on a politician and how to use it to get Trump to break into a giddy smile when he sees Putin his master it's obvious to most keen observers.M. Barsoum Philadelphia 2h agoFolks it is simple. Can we hear what Trump and Putin said to each other a few months ago. It is recored and on a server it should not be on. I am not sure why nobody is talking about these transcripts.Nelly Half Moon Bay 2h agoFinally! We get someone stating the obvious fact of Trump/Putin. Why are the Dems not talking about this all the time? Why are Congressmen and women not asking the witnesses about this? This is the ONE thing the Republicans are afraid of, so it is the one thing Democrats should do. I have been disappointed that the Russian asset thing hasn't been brought up....It's as if it is purposely bold. Trump is a Russian asset, either witting or unwitting. I doubt if there is one upper Intelligence Official that wouldn't say this. So find the right one and have them sit as a witness for this inquiry. And now the Russian big wig Diplomat and KGb spy, Lavarov, is visiting tomorrow. Good grief! Everyone is thinking this, so get out and say it Dems! Dr. Fiona Hill tried to lead into this direction but still the Dem Committee would take it up and aske her what she thought. Say it: All of Trump's Roads Lead to Russia.Ro Laren Santa Monica 2h agoAny American adult who has made an effort to educate himself or herself about Mr. Mueller's investigation or these impeachment proceedings understands that yes, with Trump all roads lead to Russia. Now if the poll numbers mean anything, Trump's crimes and Russia's involvement only matter to about 60% of us. As Trump's poll numbers remain steady, some 40% of Americans don't care what lawbreaking he is involved with or whether other nations now control our elections. Stop and think about this for a minute. Trump supporters know but literally do not care that Russia is tampering with our elections (2016 and 2020). Their cult-like support for Trump is why the Republican Senate will not remove him. There is no other reason Trump will remain in office. Trump has mesmerized his supporters like a modern day Rasputin. They will do literally anything for him, and Senate Republicans know this. Trump voters do not mind that Putin controls our nation at the highest levels of decision making. Again - think about this - they know he does, and they do not care. So I ask the rest of us. Is this the America we want to live in? To raise our families in? Where a large, rabid minority is in thrall to a lunatic puppet whose strings are firmly in Putin's hands? Because this is very much the America we live in now. The time will come, though, when we, the majority, will no longer tolerate the Trump/Putin regime. But the longer we wait, the harder it will be oust these tyrants.Tracy Washington DC 2h agoIn 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said Russia was an important source of funding for the Trump businesses. American banks wouldn't lend him money. Saudi Arabia likely bailed out Jared's disastrous real estate investment in NYC. Follow. The. Money.Huge Grizzly Seattle 2h agoYou say that Mr. Putin "has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices by faithfully parroting Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press." You are correct on all counts, except that the Republicans have not been fooled by Putin. They have gone along, headlong and absolutely willingly, in a complete sellout of personal and national principle and integrity. They should not be forgiven for this conduct, any more than Mr. Trump should be forgiven for his sellout of America.Look Ahead WA 2h agoFor Republicans who believe so fervently in their counterfactual narrative, there is an immediate remedy. Bring facts and evidence to the Committees and testify under oath. Without witnesses and evidence presented under oath, all of the GOP antics simply look foolish and very much like they are defending the guilty. It is unfortunate that there is no penalty for elected officials who share unfounded conspiracy theories, engage in innuendo and obstruct process in official Committee hearings. It is also regretable that this President is not held accountable for trying to intimidate witnesses in real time during testimony. And it is a sad reality that one of the most corrupt rulers in the world, who rules a hostile power, has managed to entirely win over one of our major parties.Gerard PA 2h agoThe strangest defense advanced today was the idea that the alleged state of the economy was reason not to impeach the President: the Republicans assert that America, the Constitution, the principle of our government are for sale to be bought by the rising stock market and a plethora of low-wage jobs. We are Faust, and the smell of sulphur is nauseating.richard wiesner oregon 2h agoIf the IG's report on the 2016 Russia investigation had found the only problem was that two of the agents involved had horrible hangnails, Barr and Trump would have condemned it.Asian Philosopher Germany 2h agoWhatever Trump is doing, he always care about his main benefactors, Putin and MBS. This is the first time I have witnessed in history that an American president became a Russian puppet with all his Republican followers at the Congress and Senate. American constitutional crisis happening right in front of the world. I heard the cries of James Madison, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin from their graves.trudds sierra madre, CA 2h ago Times PickSir, do you honestly think that House Republicans have been "fooled" by Mr. Putin? On the contrary, it's pretty obvious they understand and believe the conclusions from our Intel community. These are instead willful lies for political gain. And while some Americans may actually be misled by the theater presented as rebuttal to the impeachment, it's hard to imagine for most it's once again, not conviction but convenience that places such "patriots" solidly in Russia's back pocket.Michele Seattle 2h ago Times PickThe pattern of behavior is clear and compelling: Trump is selling out this country, its national security, its integrity and sovereignty, in order to keep power and avoid his own prosecution, and protect his financial interests. We must get the truth about his relationships and indebtedness to Putin, the Saudis, and Erdogan. Our country has been hijacked and Trump will continue to corrupt the US and turn it into an autocracy if he is not stopped and held accountable under the law.Linus Internet 2h agoThe country voted for this President knowing he is a flawed man in many ways. I don't think anything changes here - the Senate will speedily acquit him and the voters in the swing states will have to decide if they want to give Mr. Trump a second chance while the rest of the country impotently watches.David CT 2h agoIf one looks at all of his actions as "How could this benefit Russia?" most of it makes sense. Why start a trade war with China and Western allies? Why withdraw from Syria? Why try to polarize the American public? Effectively showing this to the public is critical.Mark New York 2h agoExcellent piece. We all know Trump, Inc. turned to Russian oligarchs after '08 for condo sales. It just so happened that those same oligarchs (read as kleptocrats) were laundering money through Deutsche Bank, who was the only bank willing to lend to Trump. Trump's loan officer amazingly was SC Justice Anthony Kennedy's son. Trump was and is a desperate man in need of cash/ Putin is a desperate man who knows that the geyser of oil money that funds his national budget, and has done so since the 1920's, is coming to an end. Russia has no large material economic exports other than oil and gas, but it does still have a large military, hence the military incursions into Moldova, Ossetia, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. Desperate men do desperate things, and desperately try to project power with weak hands.turbot philadelphia 2h agoThe Republicans in Congress were not fooled by the Russians. They believe in Trump no matter what the Russians do. The bottom line is - What does Putin have on Trumpstan continople brooklyn 2h agoI don't understand why there hasn't been more of a pushback by the military. They went heavily for Trump in 20116, with many bases in the South and many recruits from economically devastated areas, but in the interim, they have seen his reckless, lurching foreign policy, worship of Putin, and clear evidence that somehow everything he does benefits Russia. A commander's first obligation is to their troops, so knowing the man in charge considers their lives subject to both Trump's whims, and Putin's whispers should provoke some reaction. No?Steven Auckland 3h agoUnfortunately - to put it mildly - impeachment will have no effect on the conduct of the 2020 election. The wheels are already turning, everyone knows their part, and only a massive commitment by an honest intelligence apparatus (if there is one) can stop it. One can only hope that, in 2020, the American people make a statement so overwhelming that there can be no doubt as to their intent, despite whatever meddling there may have been. It is entirely possible that there will never be a truly credible election again as long as there are bad actors who are power hungry or bent on destabilizing democratic governments. And make no mistake, these threats are coming from right wing autocracies, and they are in the ascendancy all over the world. American centrists and liberals are the only force that can change that. Are those stakes big enough for you?Michael Kittle Vaison la Romaine, France 3h agoWe may finally have the answer as to why Trump is so accommodating to Putin. Trump has so many investments in Russia dependent on Putin's support. Trump financial reports will reveal this collusion between Trump and Putin. This should not come as a surprise to attentive Americans. Think of the worst an American president can do and that will bring you close to understanding Trump.Ray Haining Hot Springs, AR 3h agoNobody's saying how Trump withholding military aid to Ukraine would benefit Putin and Russia in their WAR against Ukraine. It was, indeed, MILITARY aid he was withholding, was it not? I understand that this is not the impeachable offense of attempting to enlist a foreign government to win an election, but I believe this aspect of the situation should be brought out.Socrates Downtown Verona. NJ 3h agoThe Republican Party has been officially reduced to a giant miasma of fraud, fiction, fantasy, conspiracy theory, deflection, misdirection and prevarication. After tax cuts for rich people and rich corporations...the GOP has no other public policy ideas (except for bankrupting the government). A civilized country needs little things like infrastructure, education, technology, voting rights, law and order, regulations, fair taxation and facts to move forward. But none of those things are ever mentioned by the Republican Party; conspiracy-mongering and tax cuts are now the official governing planks of the Grand Old Propaganda/Grand One Percent party. This is no way to manage a nation anywhere except into the ground. Americans need to hit the Trump-GOP eject button before these Lord of the Fly Republicans take us over a very steep right-wing cliff of insanity.Bob Hudson Valley 3h agoThe Republican Party is now Trump's party and the Republicans know it and are acting accordingly. You could call them opportunists following the way the political winds are blowing. The Constitution is based on members of Congress caring about the Constitution and searching for the truth. Since this is now not the case when if comes to the Republicans the Constitution has no remedy for this situation. The only remedy is an election and if Trump can manipulate elections to his advantage using foreign powers then there is no remedy and the system of government set up by the founders will be no more. The new system replacing it will be controlled by Trump. Putin figured out how to control Russian elections so he always wins and it is likely that Trump has a goal of imitating Putin. Ultimately this would mean taking over the press as Putin did. Trump cannot declare total victory as long as the there is a free press which he has labeled the enemy of the people.DAWGPOUND HAR NYC 3h agoFrom an acute perspective ..indeed shocking to say the least of the nature of this peculiar relationship. But looking at the big picture as evidence by all that has occurred in his or during this eye opening period for all the world to see....not so much so...For me, this dynamic is much expected.James Ricciardi Panama, Panama 3h ago"The witness has used language which impugns the motives of the president and suggests he's disloyal to his country, and those words should be stricken from the record and taken down," Mr. Johnson said. The Johnson rule effectively reads the impeachment power out of the constitution. How can you impeach a president if no one can say anything bad about him/her?Bruce Rozenblit Kansas City, MO 3h agoWe have yet to plow the most fertile road yet. What does Trump care about over all else? Trump. How does Trump gauge his progress? His money. Where does his money come from? Good question. We all know he has filed for bankruptcy 6 times. We all know that because of those bankruptcies, American banks will not loan him any money. We all know he has significant financial dealings with Deutsche Bank. Now, who put the money in Deutsche Bank that ended up financing Trump's business.? That is the two billion dollar question. We also know that Russian oligarchs deal in billions of dollars. We also know that Trump has close relations with Russian business interests. We also know that Trump kowtows to Putin like Pence kowtows to him. We also know that Trump is doing everything possible to conceal his financial dealings from everyone and everything. So, we know that one billion plus one billion equals two billion. But does it also equal Trump? This money road is one we should take a ride on. Will it also take us to Putin?Mark New York 2h ago@Bruce Rozenblit No, but it will take us to those who are surrogates for him. Those whose wealth only continues because of Vova's "good will."Gluscabi Dartmouth, MA 3h agoThe first Democratic candidate who labels Trump a "Russian agent" will own the simplest and most effective tag line going into the general election, provided of course that that candidate does his best to channel his inner Trump by never backing down but instead doubling down every chance he or she gets. Is Trump a Russian agent, paid for and accounted for? Not easy to say without some doubt, but that doesn't really matter because he sure as shoottin' acts like one. And when have the facts ever stopped Trump from going on the attack? The more Trump denies the label, the more he'll be digging his own grave. The real crime here is not so much the strong arming of Zelenskyy for a Biden investigation. That's small potatoes compared to Trump's withholding congressionally designated US military aid from a country engaged in a hot war with Russia, the same cast of characters who starved anywhere from one to eleven million Ukrainians during the 1930's. The Russian agent must go.Alan Columbus OH 3h agoI would not say Trump's lying "is effective", I would say it "has been effective". At some point, the public and his party may have had it with the thuggery and we do not know when that breaking point is.abigail49 georgia 3h agoFor the sake of protecting our 2020 elections from Russian hackers and disinformation, the House is justified in moving forward fast, over the process howls of Republicans, with the compelling evidence they have surrounding Ukraine. But they need to continue investigating his business and financial ties to Russia and any other autocratic governments and their oligarchs, e.g. Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Especially if he is not convicted and removed by the Senate and stands for re-election, Americans need to know what conflicts of interest he has in making foreign policy and military decisions because American soldiers' lives are at stake. The Mueller investigation did not go down that road. Any businessman with global interests is automatically compromised, even more than a vice president whose son sits on a foreign corporation's board of director. Trump's own children continue to do business in foreign countries and we have no idea what Ivanka and Jared, sitting in the White House with top security clearances, are doing. In short, Ukraine should not be the only concern of congressional oversight committees. There's a lot more.Peter Portland OR 3h agoTrump must believe that Russian help in 2016 did help him to win. He must feel that fake evidence presented by an "independent" investigator such as a foreign government appears to carry more weight that the same fake evidence from a partisan investigator. Otherwise why would he be taking such chances to duplicate via Ukraine what he got from the Russians in 2016. But now that the Russian connection is outed, he can't go back to that well.NA Wilson Massachusetts 3h agoI worry it's all for naught. Dems in the House vote to impeach, GOP in the Senate vote to acquit. Trump remains highly competitive in 2020 election, Russia and other adversaries interfere, Trump stays put. Then what?Rafael SC 3h ago@NA Wilson Think of this situation differently. To have all possible scope to defeat him, we must support everything we can to undermine him. Lack of impeachment would have been business as usual. At some point his finances will get out and then all bets are off.Tracy Washington DC 2h ago@NA Wilson: It's all Hands on deck to save the country. Don't just vote, donate what money you can, work for candidates, knock doors, make calls. It's the only way out of this nightmare.N. Smith New York City 3h agoThe Impeachment hearings weren't really necessary to prove what most everyone who's been paying attention knows. With Trump, all roads lead to Moscow. In fact, he's already acting very Putin-esque in his own way by forbidding anyone in the White House to respond to subpoena, by installing the fear of God in those who do, by punishing anyone who dares to think or act on their own, and then there's the act of holding a foreign country ransom until they agree to do his bidding -- not to mention inviting outside interference in our presidential elections. All the signs are not only there but they are ominous. By holding himself above the U.S. Constitution, Trump has declared war on this country and all the laws that govern it. And while entertainment-starved Americans laugh and cheer at his rallies, he and the Republicans drain our right to vote, and with it our Democracy. Today wasn't an epiphany. It was a warning.bl rochester 3h agoThere seems to be no discussion of the financial backing trump received after '08-09 from sources inside Russia and how these actors would have expressed their support (or conditions for their silence) to the trump campaign during '15-16. Did the FBI not identify and investigate the funders behind trump and their interactions with the campaign during 2016? Would this not have been reasonable for an investigation to look into when its entire raison d'etre was to detect sources of Russian influence?Jim TX 3h agoI wonder if Mr. Wegman believes that this editorial will change anyone's mind or influence how anyone votes in the upcoming presidential election. Basically, this is classic preaching to the choir and sadly mostly a wasted effort. I would like to read articles with proven ideas that worked to change the minds of Republicans and other like them. Such articles might give me some better ideas to convince my pro-Trump friends and neighbors to Vote for America next November.Kingfish52 Rocky Mountains 3h ago"When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected." This! This is the central fact of all the things Trump has done (so far), and yet, the Democrats have failed to make this the central focus of the case against him. Instead, they've focused on one incident, and not even the most egregious one, to justify impeachment and removal from office. This was a terrible miscalculation. No, there is no doubt that Trump attempted to coerce Ukraine into helping with his re-election by announcing a bogus investigation of the Bidens. Nor any doubt that this constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors". But this was not the highest of crimes he's committed, nor have the Dems been able to convince any Republicans, or many independents, that this deserves Trump's removal. Moreover, they failed to produce the "smoking gun" of one witness or document in Trump's own words directing the quid pro quo. They gave plenty of room for the Republican attack machine to cast enough doubt and confusion that all but ensures Trump's acquittal in the Senate. Instead of focusing only on this one incident, the Democrats should have built their case around the theme that "with Trump, all roads lead to Russia". That is a crime that even the most skeptical doubter can grasp, and when linked together, all of his crimes can be shown to be of a pattern of serving Putin, and not the people of the United States. All roads lead to Putin, but the Democrats chose to follow a dead end.DW Philly 2h ago@Kingfish52 I completely agree with you and truly don't understand why the Democrats have not been shouting this from the rooftops. For mercy's sake! The problem is not just that the president solicited help from a foreign power for his own personal gain! That's bad enough, but isn't the point that he did this because he is beholden to Russia? Russia. is. not. our. friend. Why aren't the Democrats explaining this clearly to the American people? Trump is Putin's puppet and it could not be more obvious! Don't people understand that it doesn't just happen to be Ukraine that Trump took a notion to squeeze for his "personal gain"? He doesn't just want to win because it is so nice to win elections. He has to do what Putin tells him. Obviously, every last Republican in Congress understands this clearly. Why can't the Democrats explain it to the American people clearly?Mike Republic Of Texas 4h agoObama did not provide lethal aid to Ukraine, after the Russians invaded Crimea. Obama did not Russia prevent the Iranian nuclear deal. Trump cancelled the Iranian nuclear deal, then provided lethal aid to Ukraine. Now I get it. Trump is working for Putin.Mick Montclair 3h agoBy March 2015, the US had committed more than $120 million in security assistance for Ukraine and had pledged an additional $75 million worth of equipment including UAVs, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. That assistance also included some 230 armored Humvee vehicles. Trump appears to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. "The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we're sending blankets and meals," McCain said in 2015. "Blankets don't do well against Russian tanks." While it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine's military. Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar. The Trump administration did approve the provision of arms to Ukraine, including sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank missiles, something long sought by Kiev.Ivan Memphis, TN 2h ago@Mike Trump was not the one providing lethal aid to Ukraine. It was the house and senate that proposed and forced this aid into an appropriation bill - against the wishes of the Trump administration. After Trump realized he could not block this funding he did the second best thing - he used it to blackmail the Ukraine government to provide him with dirt on Biden and support for Putin's favorite narrative (that it was Ukraine not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election).Mark New York 2h ago@Mike It also took two acts of Congress to get the aid to Ukraine. Trump had nothing to do with it. Only the Impound Inclusion Act for foreign aid allows the President to time the release of the funds, which Trump did not follow. The Act was created because Nixon, like Trump, was playing fast and loose with our tax dollars. Who was the last President who asked for help from a foreign intelligence agency? Which President favored foregn intelligence agencies over his own? Answer no one other than Trump. If that doesn't show he's in someone's pocket, nothing does.
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Dec 07, 2019 | www.unz.com
Never in the history of America, probably never in the history of any country, had there been such open and direct control of governmental activities by the very rich. So long as a handful of men in Wall Street control the credit and industrial processes of the country, they will continue to control the press, the government, and, by deception, the people. They will not only compel the public to work for them in peace, but to fight for them in war. -- John Turner, 1922
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Dec 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Originally from: The Intelligence Whistleblower protection Act did not apply to the phone call ... Reposted - Sic Semper Tyrannis
Factotum , 20 November 2019 at 01:02 PM
The favor was for Ukraine to investigate Crowdstrike and the 2016 DNC computer breach.vig -> Factotum... , 21 November 2019 at 11:00 AMReliance on Crowdstrike to investigate the DNC computer, and not an independent FBI investigation, was tied very closely to the years long anti-Trump Russiagate hoax and waste of US taxpayer time and money.
Why is this issue ignored by both the media and the Democrats. The ladies doth protest far too much.
what exactly, to the extend I recall, could the Ukraine contribute the the DNC's server/"fake malware" troubles? Beyond, that I seem to vaguely recall, the supposed malware was distributed via an Ukrainan address.David Habakkuk -> vig... , 21 November 2019 at 12:53 PMOn the other hand, there seems to be the (consensus here?) argument there was no malware breach at all, simply an insider copying files on a USB stick.
It seems to either or. No?
What basics am I missing?
vig,Factotum -> vig... , 21 November 2019 at 01:45 PMThere is no reason why it should be 'either/or'.
If people discovered there had been a leak, it would perfectly natural that in order to give 'resilience' to their cover-up strategies, they could have organised a planting of evidence on the servers, in conjunction with elements in Ukraine.
So far at least I cannot rule out the possibility that that this could have involved an actual 'false flag' hack. A possible calculation would have been that this could have made it easier for Alperovitch and 'CrowdStrike', if more people had asked serious questions about the evidence they claimed supported the 'narrative' of GRU responsibility.
The issues involved become all the more important, in the light of the progress of Ty Clevenger's attempts to exploit the clear contradiction between the claims by the FBI, in response to FOIA requests, to have no evidence relating to Seth Rich, and the remarks by Ms. Deborah Sines quoted by Michael Isikoff.
What she suggested was that the FBI had found evidence, after his death, of a hack of Rich's laptop, designed as part of a 'false flag' operation.
On this, see his 8 October, 'Motion for Discovery and Motion to Accept Supplemental Evidence' in Clevenger's own case against the DOJ, document 44 on the relevant 'Courtlistener' pages, and his 'Unopposed Motion for Stay', document 48. Both are short, and available without a 'PACER' subscription, and should be compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in ascertaining the truth about 'Russiagate.' (See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6775665/clevenger-v-us-department-of-justice/ .)
It is eminently possible that Ms. Hines has simply made an 'unforced error.'
However, I do not – yet – feel able totally to discount the possibility that what is actually at issue is a 'ruse', produced as a contingency plan to ensure that if it becomes impossible to maintain the cover-up over Rich's involvement in its original form, his laptop shows 'evidence' compatible with the 'Russiagate' narrative.
And here, is is also material that he may have had more than one laptop, that 'hard drives' can be changed, and that the level of computer skills that can be found throughout the former Soviet Union is very high. Another matter of some importance is that Ed Butowsky's 'Debunking Rod Wheeler's Claims' site is back up online. (See http://debunkingrodwheelersclaims.net )
Looking at it from the perspective of an old television current affairs hack, I do think that, while it is very helpful to have some key material available in a single place, it would useful if more attention was paid to presentation.
In particular, it would be a most helpful 'teaching aid', if a full and accurate transcript was made of the conversation with Seymour Hersh which Ed Butowsky covertly recorded. What seems clear is that both these figures ended up in very difficult positions, and that the latter clearly engaged in 'sleight of hand' in relation to his dealings with the former. That said, the fact that Butowsky's claims about his grounds for believing that Hersh's FBI informant was Andrew McCabe are clearly disingenuous does not justify the conclusion that he is wrong.
It is absolutely clear to me – despite what 'TTG', following that 'Grub Street' hack Folkenflik, claimed – that when Hersh talked to Butowsky, he believed he had been given accurate information. Indeed, I have difficulty seeing how anyone whose eyes were not hopelessly blinded by prejudice, a\nd possibly fear of where a quest for the truth might lead, could not see that, in this conversation, both men were telling the truth, as they saw it.
However, all of us, including the finest and most honourable of journalists can, from time to time, fall for disinformation. (If anyone says they can always spot when they are being played, all I can say is, if you're right, you're clearly Superman, but it is more likely that you are a fool or knave, if not both.)
The question of whether the 'timeline' produced by Hersh's FBI informant was accurate, or a deliberate attempt to disguise the fact that all kinds of people were well aware of Rich's involvement before his murder, and well aware of the fact of a leak before he was identified as its source, is absolutely central to how one interprets 'Russiagate.'
Several loose end issues about Crowdstrike:1. Why did Crowdstrike conclude it was a "Russian breach", when other evidence does show it was an internal download. What was Crowdstrike's method and motivation to reach the "Russian" conclusion instead. Why has that methodology been sealed?
2. Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.
3. What were the relationships between Crowdstrike, DNC, FBI and the Mueller team that conspired to reach this Russian conclusion.
4. Why did the Roger Stone judge, who just sent Stone away for life, refuse Stone's evidentiary demand to ascertain how exactly Crowdstrike reached its Russsian hacking conclusion, that the court then linked to Stone allegedly lying about this Russian link .
5. Indeed, let's set out with full transparency the Ukraine -- Crowsdtrike player links and loyalties to see if there are any smoking guns yet undisclosed. Trump was asking for more information about Crowdstrike like a good lawyer - never ask a question when you don't already know the right answer. Crowdstrike is owned by a Ukrainian by birth .
likbez said in reply to Factotum... , 04 December 2019 at 01:29 AM
Hi Factotum,Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.Alperovich is really a very suspicious figure. Rumors are that he was involved in compromising PGP while in MacAfee( June 2nd, 2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams - YouTube ):
Investigative Journalist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the CEO Bill Larsen bought a small, Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to Silicon Valley.
MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate to reduce NSA spying on the public.
The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order to crack encrypted communications to write a back door for law enforcement.Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike.
In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives.
His role in what we may define as "converting DNC leak into DNC hack" (I would agree with you that this probably was a false flag operation), which was supposedly designed to implicated Russians, and possibly involved Ukrainian security services, is very suspicious indeed.
Mueller treatment of Crowdstrike with "kid gloves" may suggest that Alperovich actions were part of a larger scheme. After all Crowdstike was a FBI contactor at the time.
While all this DNC hack saga is completely unclear due to lack of facts and the access to the evidence, there are some stories on Internet that indirectly somewhat strengthen your hypothesis:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/92i8dd/cyberanalyst_george_eliason_claims_that_the_fancy/
- https://www.conservapedia.com/Fancy_Bear
- http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Corporatism/National_security_state/Intelligence_services/False_flag_operations/False_flag_malware/fbi_and_cia_contractor_crowdstike.shtml
- http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neocons/Hillary/guccifer20_false_flag_operation.shtml
Enjoy and Happy Cyber Week shopping :-)
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Dec 04, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Originally from: The U.S. Has Not Reduced Its 'Global Commitments' The American Conservative by Daniel LarisonGideon Rachman tries to find similarities between the foreign policies of Trump and Obama:
Both men would detest the thought. But, in crucial respects, the foreign policies of Donald Trump and Barack Obama are looking strikingly similar.
The wildly different styles of the two presidents have disguised the underlying continuities between their approaches to the world. But look at substance, rather than style, and the similarities are impressive.
There is usually considerable continuity in U.S. foreign policy from one president to another, but Rachman is making a stronger and somewhat different claim than that. He is arguing that their foreign policy agendas are very much alike in ways that put both presidents at odds with the foreign policy establishment, and he cites "disengagement from the Middle East" and a "pivot to Asia" as two examples of these similarities. This seems superficially plausible, but it is misleading. Despite talking a lot about disengagement, Obama and Trump chose to keep the U.S. involved in several conflicts, and Trump actually escalated the wars he inherited from Obama. To the extent that there is continuity between Obama and Trump, it has been that both of them have acceded to the conventional wisdom of "the Blob" and refused to disentangle the U.S. from Middle Eastern conflicts. Ongoing support for the war on Yemen is the ugliest and most destructive example of this continuity.
In reality, neither Obama nor Trump "focused" on Asia, and Trump's foray into pseudo-engagement with North Korea has little in common with Obama's would-be "pivot" or "rebalance." U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a major part of Obama's policy in Asia. Trump pulled out of that agreement and waged destructive trade wars instead. Once we get past generalizations and look at details, the two presidents are often diametrically opposed to one another in practice. That is what one would expect when we remember that Trump has made dismantling Obama's foreign policy achievements one of his main priorities.
The significant differences between the two become much more apparent when we look at other issues. On arms control and nonproliferation, the two could not be more different. Obama negotiated a new arms reduction treaty with New START at the start of his presidency, and he wrapped up a major nonproliferation agreement with Iran and the other members of the P5+1 in 2015. Trump reneged on the latter and seems determined to kill the former. Obama touted the benefits of genuine diplomatic engagement, while Trump has made a point of reversing and undoing most of the results of Obama's engagement with Cuba and Iran. Trump's overall hostility to genuine diplomacy makes another one of Rachman claims quite baffling:
The result is that, after his warlike "fire and fury" phase, Mr Trump is now pursuing a diplomacy-first strategy that is strongly reminiscent of Mr Obama.
Calling Trump's clumsy pattern of making threats and ultimatums a "diplomacy-first strategy" is a mistake. This is akin to saying that he is adhering to foreign policy restraint because the U.S. hasn't invaded any new countries on Trump's watch. It takes something true (Trump hasn't started a new war yet) and misrepresents it as proof that the president is serious about diplomacy and that he wants to reduce U.S. military engagement overseas. Trump enjoys the spectacle of meeting with foreign leaders, but he isn't interested in doing the work or taking the risks that successful diplomacy requires. He has shown repeatedly through his own behavior, his policy preferences, and his proposed budgets that he has no use for diplomacy or diplomats, and instead he expects to be able to bully or flatter adversaries into submission.
So Rachman is simply wrong he reaches this conclusion:
Mr Trump's reluctance to attack Iran was significant. It underlines the fact that his tough-guy rhetoric disguises a strong preference for diplomacy over force.
Let's recall that the near-miss of starting a war with Iran came as a result of the downing of an unmanned drone. The fact that the U.S. was seriously considering an attack on another country over the loss of a drone is a worrisome sign that this administration is prepared to go to war at the drop of a hat. Calling off such an insane attack was the right thing to do, but there should never have been an attack to call off. That episode does not show a "strong preference for diplomacy over force." If Trump had a strong preference for diplomacy over force, his policy would not be one of relentless hostility towards Iran. Trump does not believe in diplomatic compromise, but expects the other side to capitulate under pressure. That actually makes conflict more likely and reduces the chances of meaningful negotiations.
It is true that both Obama and Trump have been falsely accused of presiding over "withdrawal" and "retreat." In Obama's case, Republican hawks made this false claim so that they could attack a fantasy version of Obama's record instead of arguing against the real one. Members of the foreign policy establishment have been warning about Trump's supposed "isolationism" for four years and it still hasn't shown up. Both presidents have been criticized in such similar ways despite conducting significantly different foreign policies because these are the automatic, knee-jerk criticisms that pundits and analysts use to criticize a president.
Because there is a strong bias in favor of "action" and "leadership," the only way most of these people know how to attack a president is to say that he is "failing" to "lead" and is guilty of "inaction." It doesn't matter if it makes sense or matches the facts. It is the safe, Blobby way to complain about a president's foreign policy without suggesting that you think there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Instead of challenging the presidents on their real records, it is easier to condemn non-existent "isolationism" and pretend that presidents that maintain or increase U.S. involvement overseas are reducing it.
Rachman ends his column with this assertion:
In their very different ways, both Mr Obama and Mr Trump have reduced America's global commitments -- and adjusted the US to a more modest international role.
The problem here is that there has been no meaningful reduction in America's "global commitments." Which commitments have been reduced or eliminated? It would be helpful if someone could be specific about this. The U.S. has more security dependents today than it did when Trump took office. NATO has been expanded to include two new countries in just the last three years. U.S. troops are engaged in hostilities in just as many countries as they were when Trump was elected. There are more troops deployed to the Middle East at the end of this year than there were at the beginning, and that is a direct consequence of Trump's bankrupt Iran policy.
We should debate whether U.S. commitments overseas need to be reduced, but we really have to stop pretending that the U.S. has been reducing those commitments when it has actually been adding to them.
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Sep 28, 2019 | www.breitbart.com
There are common threads that run through an organization repeatedly relied upon in the so-called whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump and CrowdStrike, the outside firm utilized to conclude that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's servers since the DNC would not allow the U.S. government to inspect the servers.
One of several themes is financing tied to Google, whose Google Capital led a $100 million funding drive that financed Crowdstrike. Google Capital, which now goes by the name of CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party.
CrowdStrike was mentioned by Trump in his call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign, reportedly helped draft CrowdStrike to aid with the DNC's allegedly hacked server.
On behalf of the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Perkins Coie also paid the controversial Fusion GPS firm to produce the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch.
Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia. The Council in turn is financed by Google Inc.
In a perhaps unexpected development, another Atlantic Council funder is Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Those allegations were the subject of Trump's inquiry with Zelemsky related to Biden. The Biden allegations concern significant questions about Biden's role in Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. This took place during a period when Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from Burisma.
Besides Google and Burisma funding, the Council is also financed by billionaire activist George Soros's Open Society Foundations as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. and the U.S. State Department.
Google, Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower's complaint alleging Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 presidential race.
The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the whistleblower's document and released by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower's own claims, as Breitbart News documented .
One key section of the so-called whistleblower's document claims that "multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov."
This was allegedly to follow up on Trump's call with Zelensky in order to discuss the "cases" mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower's narrative. The complainer was clearly referencing Trump's request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden corruption allegations.
Even though the statement was written in first person – "multiple U.S. officials told me" – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
That footnote reads:
In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.
The so-called whistleblower's account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three more occasions. It does so to:
Write that Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko "also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters." Document that Trump adviser Rudi Giuliani "had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani." Bolster the charge that, "I also learned from a U.S. official that 'associates' of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team." The so-called whistleblower then relates in another footnote, "I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above."The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a "joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine."
BuzzFeed infamously also first published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt outfit.
The OCCRP and BuzzFeed "joint investigation" resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump's political rivals.
The so-called whistleblower's document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia collusion claims.
Another listed OCCRP funder is the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Together with Soros's Open Society, Omidyar also funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which hosts the International Fact-Checking Network that partnered with Facebook to help determine whether news stories are "disputed."
Like OCCRP, the Poynter Institute's so-called news fact-checking project is openly funded by not only Soros' Open Society Foundations but also Google and the National Endowment for Democracy.
CrowdStrike and DNC servers
CrowdStrike, meanwhile, was brought up by Trump in his phone call with Zelensky. According to the transcript, Trump told Zelensky, "I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike I guess you have one of your wealthy people The server, they say Ukraine has it."
In his extensive report , Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller notes that his investigative team did not "obtain or examine" the servers of the DNC in determining whether those servers were hacked by Russia.
The DNC famously refused to allow the FBI to access its servers to verify the allegation that Russia carried out a hack during the 2016 presidential campaign. Instead, the DNC reached an arrangement with the FBI in which CrowdStrike conducted forensics on the server and shared details with the FBI.
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the FBI registered "multiple requests at different levels," to review the DNC's hacked servers. Ultimately, the DNC and FBI came to an agreement in which a "highly respected private company" -- a reference to CrowdStrike -- would carry out forensics on the servers and share any information that it discovered with the FBI, Comey testified.
A senior law enforcement official stressed the importance of the FBI gaining direct access to the servers, a request that was denied by the DNC.
"The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated," the official was quoted by the news media as saying.
"This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier," the official continued.
... ... ...
Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, " Aaron Klein Investigative Radio ." Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.
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Jan 01, 2017 | themillenniumreport.com
"If someone steals your keys to encrypt the data, it doesn't matter how secure the algorithms are."
Dmitri Alperovitch, founder of CrowdStrike.
By the Anonymous Patriots
SOTN ExclusiveRussians did not hack the DNC system, a Russian named Dmitri Alperovitch is the hacker and he works for President Obama. In the last five years the Obama administration has turned exclusively to one Russian to solve every major cyber-attack in America, whether the attack was on the U.S. government or a corporation. Only one "super-hero cyber-warrior" seems to "have the codes" to figure out "if" a system was hacked and by "whom."
Dmitri's company, CrowdStrike has been called in by Obama to solve mysterious attacks on many high level government agencies and American corporations, including: German Bundestag, Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the White House, the State Department, SONY, and many others.
CrowdStrike's philosophy is: "You don't have a malware problem; you have an adversary problem."
CrowdStrike has played a critical role in the development of America's cyber-defense policy. Dmitri Alperovitch and George Kurtz, a former head of the FBI cyberwarfare unit founded CrowdStrike. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director at the FBI is now CrowdStrike's president of services. The company is crawling with former U.S. intelligence agents.
Before Alperovitch founded CrowdStrike in 2011, he was working in Atlanta as the chief threat officer at the antivirus software firm McAfee, owned by Intel (a DARPA company). During that time, he "discovered" the Chinese had compromised at least seventy-one companies and organizations, including thirteen defense contractors, three electronics firms, and the International Olympic Committee. He was the only person to notice the biggest cyberattack in history! Nothing suspicious about that.
Alperovitch and the DNC
After CrowdStrike was hired as an independent "vendor" by the DNC to investigate a possible cyberattack on their system, Alperovitch sent the DNC a proprietary software package called Falcon that monitors the networks of its clients in real time. According to Alperovitch, Falcon "lit up," within ten seconds of being installed at the DNC. Alperovitch had his "proof" in TEN SECONDS that Russia was in the network. This "alleged" evidence of Russian hacking has yet to be shared with anyone.
As Donald Trump has pointed out, the FBI, the agency that should have been immediately involved in hacking that effects "National Security," has yet to even examine the DNC system to begin an investigation. Instead, the FBI and 16 other U.S. "intelligence" agencies simply "agree" with Obama's most trusted "cyberwarfare" expert Dmitri Alperovitch's "TEN SECOND" assessment that produced no evidence to support the claim.
Also remember that it is only Alperovitch and CrowdStrike that claim to have evidence that it was Russian hackers . In fact, only two hackers were found to have been in the system and were both identified by Alperovitch as Russian FSB (CIA) and the Russian GRU (DoD). It is only Alperovitch who claims that he knows that it is Putin behind these two hackers.
Alperovitch failed to mention in his conclusive "TEN SECOND" assessment that Guccifer 2.0 had already hacked the DNC and made available to the public the documents he hacked – before Alperovitch did his ten second assessment. Alperovitch reported that no other hackers were found, ignoring the fact that Guccifer 2.0 had already hacked and released DNC documents to the public. Alperovitch's assessment also goes directly against Julian Assange's repeated statements that the DNC leaks did not come from the Russians.
The ridiculously fake cyber-attack assessment done by Alperovitch and CrowdStrike naïvely flies in the face of the fact that a DNC insider admitted that he had released the DNC documents. Julian Assange implied in an interview that the murdered Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was the source of a trove of damaging emails the website posted just days before the party's convention. Seth was on his way to testify about the DNC leaks to the FBI when he was shot dead in the street.
It is also absurd to hear Alperovitch state that the Russian FSB (equivalent to the CIA) had been monitoring the DNC site for over a year and had done nothing. No attack, no theft, and no harm was done to the system by this "false-flag cyber-attack" on the DNC – or at least, Alperovitch "reported" there was an attack. The second hacker, the supposed Russian military (GRU – like the U.S. DoD) hacker, had just entered the system two weeks before and also had done "nothing" but observe.
It is only Alperovitch's word that reports that the Russian FSB was "looking for files on Donald Trump."
It is only this false claim that spuriously ties Trump to the "alleged" attack. It is also only Alperovitch who believes that this hack that was supposedly "looking for Trump files" was an attempt to "influence" the election. No files were found about Trump by the second hacker, as we know from Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0's leaks. To confabulate that "Russian's hacked the DNC to influence the elections" is the claim of one well-known Russian spy. Then, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously confirm that Alperovitch is correct – even though there is no evidence and no investigation was ever conducted .
How does Dmitri Alperovitch have such power? Why did Obama again and again use Alperovitch's company, CrowdStrike, when they have miserably failed to stop further cyber-attacks on the systems they were hired to protect? Why should anyone believe CrowdStrikes false-flag report?
After documents from the DNC continued to leak, and Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks made CrowdStrike's report look foolish, Alperovitch decided the situation was far worse than he had reported. He single-handedly concluded that the Russians were conducting an "influence operation" to help win the election for Trump . This false assertion had absolutely no evidence to back it up.
On July 22, three days before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, WikiLeaks dumped a massive cache of emails that had been "stolen" (not hacked) from the DNC. Reporters soon found emails suggesting that the DNC leadership had favored Hillary Clinton in her primary race against Bernie Sanders, which led Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, along with three other officials, to resign.
Just days later, it was discovered that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had been hacked. CrowdStrike was called in again and once again, Alperovitch immediately "believed" that Russia was responsible. A lawyer for the DCCC gave Alperovitch permission to confirm the leak and to name Russia as the suspected author. Two weeks later, files from the DCCC began to appear on Guccifer 2.0's website. This time Guccifer released information about Democratic congressional candidates who were running close races in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. On August 12, Guccifer went further, publishing a spreadsheet that included the personal email addresses and phone numbers of nearly two hundred Democratic members of Congress.
Once again, Guccifer 2.0 proved Alperovitch and CrowdStrike's claims to be grossly incorrect about the hack originating from Russia, with Putin masterminding it all. Nancy Pelosi offered members of Congress Alperovitch's suggestion of installing Falcon , the system that failed to stop cyberattacks at the DNC, on all congressional laptops.
Key Point: Once Falcon was installed on the computers of members of the U.S. Congress, CrowdStrike had even further full access into U.S. government accounts.
Alperovitch's "Unbelievable" History
Dmitri was born in 1980 in Moscow where his father, Michael, was a nuclear physicist, (so Dmitri claims). Dmitri's father was supposedly involved at the highest levels of Russian nuclear science. He also claims that his father taught him to write code as a child.
In 1990, his father was sent to Maryland as part of a nuclear-safety training program for scientists. In 1994, Michael Alperovitch was granted a visa to Canada, and a year later the family moved to Chattanooga, where Michael took a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
While Dmitri Alperovitch was still in high school, he and his father started an encryption-technology business. Dmitri studied computer science at Georgia Tech and went on to work at an antispam software firm. It was at this time that he realized that cyber-defense was more about psychology than it was about technology. A very odd thing to conclude.
Dmitri Alperovitch posed as a "Russian gangster" on spam discussion forums which brought his illegal activity to the attention of the FBI – as a criminal. In 2005, Dmitri flew to Pittsburgh to meet an FBI agent named Keith Mularski, who had been asked to lead an undercover operation against a vast Russian credit-card-theft syndicate. Alperovitch worked closely with Mularski's sting operation which took two years, but it ultimately brought about fifty-six arrests. Dmitri Alperovitch then became a pawn of the FBI and CIA.
In 2010, while he was at McAfee, the head of cybersecurity at Google told Dmitri that Gmail accounts belonging to human-rights activists in China had been breached. Google suspected the Chinese government. Alperovitch found that the breach was unprecedented in scale; it affected more than a dozen of McAfee's clients and involved the Chinese government. Three days after his supposed discovery, Alperovitch was on a plane to Washington where he had been asked to vet a paragraph in a speech by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
2014, Sony called in CrowdStrike to investigate a breach of its network. Alperovitch needed just "two hours" to identify North Korea as the adversary. Executives at Sony asked Alperovitch to go public with the information immediately, but it took the FBI another three weeks before it confirmed the attribution.
Alperovitch then developed a list of "usual suspects" who were well-known hackers who had identifiable malware that they commonly used. Many people use the same malware and Alperovitch's obsession with believing he has the only accurate list of hackers in the world is plain idiocy exacerbated by the U.S. government's belief in his nonsense. Alperovitch even speaks like a "nut-case" in his personal Twitters, which generally have absolutely no references to the technology he is supposedly the best at in the entire world.
Dmitri – Front Man for His Father's Russian Espionage Mission
After taking a close look at the disinformation around Dmitri and his father, it is clear to see that Michael Alperovitch became a CIA operative during his first visit to America. Upon his return to Russia, he stole the best Russian encryption codes that were used to protect the top-secret work of nuclear physics in which his father is alleged to have been a major player. Upon surrendering the codes to the CIA when he returned to Canada, the CIA made it possible for a Russian nuclear scientist to become an American citizen overnight and gain a top-secret security clearance to work at the Oakridge plant, one of the most secure and protected nuclear facilities in America . Only the CIA can transform a Russian into an American with a top-secret clearance overnight.
We can see on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page that he went from one fantastically top-secret job to the next without a break from the time he entered America. He seemed to be on a career path to work in every major U.S. agency in America. In every job he was hired as the top expert in the field and the leader of the company. All of these jobs after the first one were in cryptology, not nuclear physics. As a matter of fact, Michael became the top expert in America overnight and has stayed the top expert to this day.
Most of the work of cyber-security is creating secure interactions on a non-secure system like the Internet. The cryptologist who assigns the encryption codes controls the system from that point on .
Key Point: Cryptologists are well known for leaving a "back-door" in the base-code so that they can always have over-riding control.
Michael Alperovitch essentially has the "codes" for all Department of Defense sites, the Treasury, the State Department, cell-phones, satellites, and public media . There is hardly any powerful agency or company that he has not written the "codes" for. One might ask, why do American companies and the U.S. government use his particular codes? What are so special about Michael's codes?
Stolen Russian Codes
In December, Obama ordered the U.S. military to conduct cyberattacks against Russia in retaliation for the alleged DNC hacks. All of the attempts to attack Russia's military and intelligence agencies failed miserably. Russia laughed at Obama's attempts to hack their systems. Even the Russian companies targeted by the attacks were not harmed by Obama's cyber-attacks. Hardly any news of these massive and embarrassing failed cyber-attacks were reported by the Main Stream Media. The internet has been scrubbed clean of the reports that said Russia's cyber-defenses were impenetrable due to the sophistication of their encryption codes.
Michael Alperovitch was in possession of those impenetrable codes when he was a top scientist in Russia. It was these very codes that he shared with the CIA on his first trip to America . These codes got him spirited into America and "turned into" the best cryptologist in the world. Michael is simply using the effective codes of Russia to design his codes for the many systems he has created in America for the CIA .
KEY POINT: It is crucial to understand at this junction that the CIA is not solely working for America . The CIA works for itself and there are three branches to the CIA – two of which are hostile to American national interests and support globalism.
Michael and Dmitri Alperovitch work for the CIA (and international intelligence corporations) who support globalism . They, and the globalists for whom they work, are not friends of America or Russia. It is highly likely that the criminal activities of Dmitri, which were supported and sponsored by the FBI, created the very hackers who he often claims are responsible for cyberattacks. None of these supposed "attackers" have ever been found or arrested; they simply exist in the files of CrowdStrike and are used as the "usual culprits" when the FBI or CIA calls in Dmitri to give the one and only opinion that counts. Only Dmitri's "suspicions" are offered as evidence and yet 17 U.S. intelligence agencies stand behind the CrowdStrike report and Dmitri's suspicions.
Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys
Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who works with PKI. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity. The PKI creates digital certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a cryptographic technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures . Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key bound to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the market .
Michael's past is clouded in confusion and lies. Dmitri states that his father was a nuclear physicist and that he came to America the first time in a nuclear based shared program between America and Russia. But if we look at his current personal Linked In page, Michael claims he has a Master Degree in Applied Mathematics from Gorky State University. From 1932 to 1956, its name was State University of Gorky. Now it is known as Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod – National Research University (UNN), also known as Lobachevsky University. Does Michael not even know the name of the University he graduated from? And when does a person with a Master's Degree become a leading nuclear physicist who comes to "visit" America. In Michael's Linked In page there is a long list of his skills and there is no mention of nuclear physics.
Also on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page we find some of his illustrious history that paints a picture of either the most brilliant mind in computer security, encryption, and cyberwarfare, or a CIA/FBI backed Russian spy. Imagine that out of all the people in the world to put in charge of the encryption keys for the Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury, U.S. military satellites, the flow of network news, cell phone encryption, the Pathfire (media control) Program, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Global Information Grid, and TriCipher Armored Credential System among many others, the government hires a Russian spy . Go figure.
Michael Alperovitch's Linked In Page
Education:
Gorky State University, Russia, MS in Applied Mathematics
Work History:
VT IDirect -2014 – Designing security architecture for satellite communications including cryptographic protocols, authentication.
Principal SME (Contractor)
DISA -Defense Information Systems Agency (Manager of the Global Information Grid) – 2012-2014 – Worked on PKI and identity management projects for DISA utilizing Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Performed application security and penetration testing.
Technical Lead (Contractor)
U.S. Department of the Treasury – 2011 – Designed enterprise validation service architecture for PKI certificate credentials with Single Sign On authentication.
Comtech Mobile Datacom – 2007-2010 – Subject matter expert on latest information security practices, including authentication, encryption and key management.
TriCipher – 2006-2007 – Designed and developed security architecture for TriCipher Armored Credential Authentication System.
BellSouth – 2003-2006 – Designed and built server-side Jabber-based messaging platform with Single Sign On authentication.
Principal Software Research Engineer
Pathfire – 2001-2002 – Designed and developed Digital Rights Management Server for Video on Demand and content distribution applications. Pathfire provides digital media distribution and management solutions to the television, media, and entertainment industries. The company offers Digital Media Gateway, a digital IP store-and-forward platform, delivering news stories, syndicated programming, advertising spots, and video news releases to broadcasters. It provides solutions for content providers and broadcasters, as well as station solutions.
Obama – No Friend of America
Obama is no friend of America in the war against cyber-attacks. The very agencies and departments being defended by Michael Alperovitch's "singular and most brilliant" ability to write encryption codes have all been successfully attacked and compromised since Michael set up the codes. But we shouldn't worry, because if there is a cyberattack in the Obama administration, Michael's son Dmitri is called in to "prove" that it isn't the fault of his father's codes. It was the "damn Russians", or even "Putin himself" who attacked American networks.
Not one of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies is capable of figuring out a successful cyberattack against America without Michael and Dmitri's help. Those same 17 U.S. intelligence agencies were not able to effectively launch a successful cyberattack against Russia. It seems like the Russian's have strong codes and America has weak codes. We can thank Michael and Dmitri Alperovitch for that.
It is clear that there was no DNC hack beyond Guccifer 2.0. Dmitri Alperovitch is a "frontman" for his father's encryption espionage mission.
Is it any wonder that Trump says that he has "his own people" to deliver his intelligence to him that is outside of the infiltrated U.S. government intelligence agencies and the Obama administration ? Isn't any wonder that citizens have to go anywhere BUT the MSM to find real news or that the new administration has to go to independent news to get good intel?
It is hard to say anything more damnable than to again quote Dmitri on these very issues:
"If someone steals your keys to encrypt the data, it doesn't matter how secure the algorithms are." Dmitri Alperovitch, founder of CrowdStrikeOriginally posted at: http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=62536
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Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com
AwanContra - George Webb, Investigative Journalist
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Dec 04, 2018 | www.reddit.com
Cyberanalyst George Eliason has written some intriguing blogs recently claiming that the "Fancy Bear" which hacked the DNC server in mid-2016 was in fact a branch of Ukrainian intelligence linked to the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. I invite you to have a go at one of his recent essays:
https://off-guardian.org/2018/06/25/who-is-fancy-bear-and-who-are-they-working-for/
Since I am not very computer savvy and don't know much about the world of hackers - added to the fact that Eliason's writing is too cute and convoluted - I have difficulty navigating Eliason's thought. Nonetheless, here is what I can make of Eliasons' claims, as supported by independent literature:
Russian hacker Konstantin Kozlovsky, in Moscow court filings, has claimed that he did the DNC hack – and can prove it, because he left some specific code on the DNC server.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/366696-russian-hacker-claims-he-can-prove-he-hacked-dnc
Kozlovsky states that he did so by order of Dimitry Dokuchaev (formerly of the FSB, and currently in prison in Russia on treason charges) who works with the Russian traitor hacker group Shaltai Boltai.
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-hacker-stealing-clintons-emailshacking-dnc-putinsfsb-745555 (Note that Newsweek's title is an overt lie.)
According to Eliason, Shaltai Boltai works in collaboration with the Ukrainian hacker group RUH8, a group of neo-Nazis (Privat Sektor) who are affiliated with Ukrainian intelligence. And RUH8 is allied with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike.
https://off-guardian.org/2018/06/25/who-is-fancy-bear-and-who-are-they-working-for/
Cyberexpert Jeffrey Carr has stated that RUH8 has the X-Agent malware which our intelligence community has erroneously claimed is possessed only by Russian intelligence, and used by "Fancy Bear".
Eliason has concluded that RUH8 is Fancy Bear.
This might help explain why Adam Carter has determined that some of the malware found on the DNC server was compiled AFTER Crowdstrike was working on the DNC server – Crowdstrike was in collusion with Fancy Bear (RUH8).
In other words, Crowdstrike likely arranged for a hack by Ukrainian intelligence that they could then attribute to Russia.
As far as I can tell, none of this is pertinent to how Wikileaks obtained their DNC emails, which most likely were leaked.
How curious that our Deep State and the recent Mueller indictment have had nothing to say about Kozlovsky's confession - whom I tend to take seriously because he offers a simple way to confirm his claim. Also interesting that the FBI has shown no interest in looking at the DNC server to check whether Kozlovsky's code is there.
I will ask Adam Carter for his opinion on this. 19 comments 84% Upvoted This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast Sort by View discussions in 1 other community level 1
zer0mas 1 point · 1 year ago
veganmark 2 points · 1 year agoIts worth noting that Dimitri Alperovich's (Crowdstrike) hatred of Putin is second only to Hillary's hatred for taking responsibility for her actions. level 1
alskdmv-nosleep4u -1 points · 1 year agoThanks - I'll continue to follow Eliason's work. The thesis that Ukrainian intelligence is hacking a number of targets so that Russia gets blamed for it has intuitive appeal. level 1
alskdmv-nosleep4u 2 points · 1 year agoI see things like this:
DNC wasn't even hacked.
and have to cringe. Any hacks weren't related to Wikileaks, who got their info from leakers, but that is not the same thing as no hack. Leaks and hacks aren't mutually exclusive. They actually occur together pretty commonly.
DNC's security was utter shit. Systems with shit security and obviously valuable info usually get hacked by multiple groups. In the case of the DNC, Hillary's email servers, etc., it's basically impossible they weren't hacked by dozens of intruders. A plastic bag of 100s will not sit untouched on a NYC street corner for 4 weeks. Not. fucking. happening.
Interestingly, Russia was probably not one of the hacking groups. The willful destruction of evidence by the DNC themselves probably points to Russia not being one of the those groups. The DNC wouldn't destroy evidence that supported their position. Also, government spy agencies keep info like that closely held. They might leak out tidbits, but they don't do wholesale dumps, like, ever.
That's what the DNC is lying about. Not that hacks happened (they undoubtedly did), but about who did them (probably not Russian gov), and if hacks mattered (they didn't since everything was getting leaked anyway).
The DNC/Mueller/etc are lying, but like most practiced liars they're mixing the lies with half-truths and unrelated facts to muddy the waters:
Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools
Yes, but that spoofed 'evidence' is not the direct opposite of the truth, like I see people assuming. Bad assumption, and the establishment plays on that to make critic look bad. The spoofed evidence is just mud.
An interesting question is, since it's basically guaranteed the DNC got hacked, but probably not by the Russians, is, what groups did hack the DNC, and why did the DNC scramble madly to hide their identities?
And while you think about that question, consider the close parallel with the Awan case, where Dems were ostensibly the victims, but they again scrambled to cover up for the people who supposedly harmed them. level 2
Honztastic 2 points · 1 year agoWhat's hilarious about the 2 down-votes is I can't tell if their from pro-Russiagate trolls, or from people who who can't get past binary thinking. level 1
veganmark 2 points · 1 year agoDNC wasn't even hacked. Emails were leaked. They didn't even examine the server. Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools that we know about from wikileaks. It's important to know how each new lie is a lie. But man I am just so done with all this Russia shit. level 2
Inuma I take the headspace of idiots 9 points · 1 year agoCrowdstrike claims that malware was found on DNC server. I agree that this has nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases. What I am wondering is whether Crowdstrike may have arranged for the DNC to be hacked so that Russia could be blamed. Continue this thread
level 1 veganmark 8 points · 1 year agoSo you mean to tell me that WWIII is being prepared by Mueller and it was manufactured consent?
I'd be shocked, but this only proves that the "Deep State" only cares about their power, consequences be damned. level 1
HillaryBrokeTheLaw Long live dead poets 10 points · 1 year agoGeorge Eliason promises additional essays: *The next articles, starting with one about Fancy Bear's hot/cold ongoing relationship with Bellingcat which destroys the JIT investigation, will showcase the following: Fancy Bear worked with Bellingcat and the Ukrainian government providing Information War material as evidence for MH17:
- Fancy Bear is an inside unit of the Atlantic Council and their Digital Forensics Lab
- Fancy Bear worked with Crowdstrike and Dimitri Alperovich Fancy Bear is Ukrainian Intelligence
- How Fancy Bear tried to sway the US election for Team Hillary
- Fancy Bear worked against US Intel gathering by providing consistently fraudulent data
- Fancy Bear contributed to James Clapper's January 2017 ODNI Report on Fancy Bear and Russian Influence. [You really can't make this shit up.]
- Fancy Bear had access to US government secure servers while working as foreign spies.* level 1
Nice.
I'm glad you're still following this. Crowdstrike is shady af. level 1
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Dec 04, 2019 | www.conservapedia.com
Fancy Bear (also know as Strontium Group, or APT28) is a Ukrainian cyber espionage group. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike incorrectly has said with a medium level of confidence that it is associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU . CrowdStrike founder, Dmitri Alperovitch , has colluded with Fancy Bear. American journalist George Eliason has written extensively on the subject.
There are a couple of caveats that need to be made when identifying the Fancy Bear hackers. The first is the identifier used by Mueller as Russian FSB and GRU may have been true- 10 years ago. This group was on the run trying to stay a step ahead of Russian law enforcement until October 2016. So we have part of the Fancy bear hacking group identified as Ruskie traitors and possibly former Russian state security. The majority of the group are Ukrainians making up Ukraine's Cyber Warfare groups.
Eliason lives and works in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT, the BBC , and Press-TV. His articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washingtons Blog, OpedNews, the Saker, RT, Global Research, and RINF, and the Greanville Post among others. He has been cited and republished by various academic blogs including Defending History, Michael Hudson, SWEDHR, Counterpunch, the Justice Integrity Project, among others.
Contents [ hide ]Fancy Bear is Ukrainian Intelligence Shaltai Boltai
- 1 Fancy Bear is Ukrainian Intelligence
- 2 Alleged DNC hack
- 3 Alperovitch and Fancy Bear
- 4 Obama, Brazile, Comey, and CrowdStrike
- 5 Further reading
- 6 References
- 7 External links
The "Fancy Bear hackers" may have been given the passwords to get into the servers at the DNC because they were part of the Team Clinton opposition research team. It was part of their job.
According to Politico ,
"In an interview this month, at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign. Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well." [1]The only investigative journalists, government officials, and private intelligence operatives that work together in 2014-2015-2016 Ukraine are Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and the Ministry of Information.
All of these hacking and information operation groups work for Andrea Chalupa with EuroMaidanPR and Irena Chalupa at the Atlantic Council. Both Chalupa sisters work directly with the Ukrainian government's intelligence and propaganda arms.
Since 2014 in Ukraine, these are the only OSINT, hacking, Intel, espionage , terrorist , counter-terrorism, cyber, propaganda , and info war channels officially recognized and directed by Ukraine's Information Ministry. Along with their American colleagues, they populate the hit-for-hire website Myrotvorets with people who stand against Ukraine's criminal activities.
The hackers, OSINT, Cyber, spies, terrorists, etc. call themselves volunteers to keep safe from State level retaliation, even though a child can follow the money. As volunteers motivated by politics and patriotism they are protected to a degree from retribution.
They don't claim State sponsorship or governance and the level of attack falls below the threshold of military action. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had a lot of latitude for making the attribution Russian, even though the attacks came from Ukrainian Intelligence. Based on how the rules of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber are written, because the few members of the coalition from Shaltai Boltai are Russian in nationality, Fancy Bear can be attributed as a Russian entity for the purposes of retribution. The caveat is if the attribution is proven wrong, the US will be liable for damages caused to the State which in this case is Russia.
How large is the Fancy Bear unit? According to their propaganda section InformNapalm, they have the ability to research and work in over 30 different languages.
This can be considered an Information Operation against the people of the United States and of course Russia. After 2013, Shaltay Boltay was no longer physically available to work for Russia. The Russian hackers were in Ukraine working for the Ukrainian government's Information Ministry which is in charge of the cyber war. They were in Ukraine until October 2016 when they were tricked to return to Moscow and promptly arrested for treason.
From all this information we know the Russian component of Team Fancy Bear is Shaltai Boltai. We know the Ukrainian Intel component is called CyberHunta and Ukraine Cyber Alliance which includes the hacker group RUH8. We know both groups work/ worked for Ukrainian Intelligence. We know they are grouped with InformNapalm which is Ukraine's OSINT unit. We know their manager is a Ukrainian named Kristina Dobrovolska. And lastly, all of the above work directly with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich.
In short, the Russian-Ukrainian partnership that became Fancy Bear started in late 2013 to very early 2014 and ended in October 2016 in what appears to be a squabble over the alleged data from the Surkov leak.
But during 2014, 2015, and 2016 Shaltai Boltai, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, and CyberHunta went to work for the DNC as opposition researchers .
The First Time Shaltai Boltai was Handed the Keys to US Gov ServersThe setup to this happened long before the partnership with Ukrainian Intel hackers and Russia's Shaltai Boltai was forged. The hack that gained access to US top-secret servers happened just after the partnership was cemented after Euro-Maidan.
In August 2009 Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department Huma Abedin sent the passwords to her Government laptop to her Yahoo mail account. On August 16, 2010, Abedin received an email titled "Re: Your yahoo account. We can see where this is going, can't we?
"After Abedin sent an unspecified number of sensitive emails to her Yahoo account, half a billion Yahoo accounts were hacked by Russian cybersecurity expert and Russian intelligence agent, Igor Sushchin, in 2014. The hack, one of the largest in history, allowed Sushchin's associates to access email accounts into 2015 and 2016."
Igor Sushchin was part of the Shaltai Boltai hacking group that is charged with the Yahoo hack.
The time frame has to be noted. The hack happened in 2014. Access to the email accounts continued through 2016. The Ukrainian Intel partnership was already blossoming and Shaltai Boltai was working from Kiev, Ukraine.
So when we look at the INFRASTRUCTURE HACKS, WHITE HOUSE HACKS, CONGRESS, start with looking at the time frame. Ukraine had the keys already in hand in 2014.
Chalupa collusion with Ukrainian Intelligence
- See also: Ukrainian collusion and Ukrainian collusion timeline
Alexandra Chalupa hired this particular hacking terrorist group, which Dimitry Alperovich and Crowdstrike dubbed "Fancy Bear", in 2015 at the latest. While the Ukrainian hackers worked for the DNC, Fancy Bear had to send in progress reports, turn in research, and communicate on the state of the projects they were working on. Let's face it, once you're in, setting up your Fancy Bear toolkit doesn't get any easier. This is why I said the DNC hack isn't the big crime. It's a big con and all the parties were in on it.
Hillary Clinton exposed secrets to hacking threats by using private email instead of secured servers. Given the information provided she was probably being monitored by our intrepid Ruskie-Ukie union made in hell hackers. Anthony Weiner exposed himself and his wife Huma Abedin using Weiner's computer for top-secret State Department emails. And of course Huma Abedin exposed herself along with her top-secret passwords at Yahoo and it looks like the hackers the DNC hired to do opposition research hacked her.
Here's a question. Did Huma Abedin have Hillary Clinton's passwords for her private email server? It would seem logical given her position with Clinton at the State Department and afterward. This means that Hillary Clinton and the US government top secret servers were most likely compromised by Fancy Bear before the DNC and Team Clinton hired them by using legitimate passwords.
DobrovolskaHillary Clinton retained State Dept. top secret clearance passwords for 6 of her former staff from 2013 through prepping for the 2016 election. [2] [3] Alexandra Chalupa was running a research department that is rich in (foreign) Ukrainian Intelligence operatives, hackers, terrorists, and a couple Ruskie traitors.
Kristina Dobrovolska was acting as a handler and translator for the US State Department in 2016. She is the Fancy Bear *opposition researcher handler manager. Kristina goes to Washington to meet with Chalupa.
Alexandra types in her password to show Dobrovolska something she found and her eager to please Ukrainian apprentice finds the keystrokes are seared into her memory. She tells the Fancy Bear crew about it and they immediately get to work looking for Trump material on the US secret servers with legitimate access. I mean, what else could they do with this? Turn over sensitive information to the ever corrupt Ukrainian government?
According to the Politico article, Alexandra Chalupa was meeting with the Ukrainian embassy in June of 2016 to discuss getting more help sticking it to candidate Trump. At the same time she was meeting, the embassy had a reception that highlighted female Ukrainian leaders.
Four Verkhovna Rada [parlaiment] deputies there for the event included: Viktoriia Y. Ptashnyk, Anna A. Romanova, Alyona I. Shkrum, and Taras T. Pastukh. [4]
According to CNN , [5] DNC sources said Chalupa told DNC operatives the Ukrainian government would be willing to deliver damaging information against Trump's campaign. Later, Chalupa would lead the charge to try to unseat president-elect Trump starting on Nov 10, 2016.
Accompanying them Kristina Dobrovolska who was a U.S. Embassy-assigned government liaison and translator who escorted the delegates from Kyiv during their visits to Albany and Washington.
Kristina Dobrovolska is the handler manager working with Ukraine's DNC Fancy Bear Hackers. [6] She took the Rada [parliament] members to dinner to meet Joel Harding who designed Ukraine's infamous Information Policy which opened up their kill-for-hire-website Myrotvorets. Then she took them to meet the Ukrainian Diaspora leader doing the hiring. Nestor Paslawsky is the surviving nephew to the infamous torturer The WWII OUNb leader, Mykola Lebed.
Fancy Bear's Second Chance at Top Secret Passwords From Team ClintonOne very successful method of hacking is called social engineering . You gain access to the office space and any related properties and physically locate the passwords or clues to get you into the hardware you want to hack. This includes something as simple as looking over the shoulder of the person typing in passwords.
The Fancy Bear hackers were hired by Alexandra Chalupa to work for DNC opposition research. On different occasions, Fancy Bear handler Kristina Dobrovolska traveled to the US to meet the Diaspora leaders, her boss Alexandra Chalupa, Irena Chalupa, Andrea Chalupa, US Dept of State personnel, and most likely Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich. Alperovich was working with the hackers in 2015-16. In 2016, the only groups known to have Fancy Bear's signature tools called X-tunnel and X-Agent were Alperovich, Crowdstrike, and Fancy Bear (Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and RUH8/RUX8. Yes, that does explain a few things.
Alleged DNC hackThere were multiple DNC hacks. There is also clear proof supporting the download to a USB stick and subsequent information exchange (leak) to Wikileaks . All are separate events.
- The group I previously identified as Fancy Bear was given access to request password privileges at the DNC. And it looks like the DNC provided them with it.
- the Podesta email hack looks like a revenge hack.
- The reason Republican opposition research files were stolen can be put into context now because we know who the hackers are and what motivates them.
At the same time this story developed, it overshadowed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It is a matter of public record that Team Clinton provided the DNC hackers with passwords to State Department servers on at least 2 occasions, one wittingly and one not. Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators.
If the leak came through Seth Rich , it may have been because he saw foreign Intel operatives given this access from the presumed winners of the 2016 US presidential election . The leaker may have been trying to do something about it. I'm curious what information Wikileaks might have.
Alperovitch and Fancy BearGeorge Eliason, Washingtonsblog: Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart- Say Hello to Fancy Bear. investigated. [7]
- In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the 2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is an "as is" statement showing this.
- The difference bet enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to be investigated for real crimes. For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe is from Ukraine. How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?
- The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution. The bar Dimitri Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian involvement?
- information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that every private actor in the information game was radically political.
- Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee. Asked to comment on Alperovitch's discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians."
- How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably, maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks." The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian losses.
- NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant for NBC. According to NBC the story reads like this."The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is Shawn Henry , a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.
- In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU." The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be." According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that "intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."
- The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment. Although subtitles aren't on it, the former Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have been in deep trouble. How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and still get this much media attention?
- Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
- Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.
- According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians," said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her research."" July 25, 2016
- If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa ? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection.
- How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. According to Esquire.com, Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work.
- Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers [show a conflict of interest]. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
- The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera . When these people go to a Holocaust memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed. [8] There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and want an authoritarian fascism .
- Alexandra Chalupa- According to the Ukrainian Weekly , [9]
"The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital Maidan by both Chalupas is a clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25 year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
- Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that founded Euromaidan Press. Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev.
- In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.
- At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.
- Andrea Chalupa has worked with Yurash's Euromaidan Press which is associated with Informnapalm.org and supplies the state level hackers for Ukraine.
- Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene Chalupa. From her bio– Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian emigre leader.
- According to Robert Parry's article [10] At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council . Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
- The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign.
- What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security?
- When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal conspiracy.
- If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.
- Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
- When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually. There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
- Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers?
- In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. [11] They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This image shows Crowdstrike in their network. Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network. In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The network communication goes through a secondary source.
Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list.
- Should someone tell Dimitri Alperovitch that Gerashchenko, who is now in charge of Peacekeeper recently threatened president-elect Donald Trump that he would put him on his "Peacemaker" site as a target? The same has been done with Silvio Berscaloni in the past.
- Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence) tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter. This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention.
Obama, Brazile, Comey, and CrowdStrike
- These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to promote the story of Russian hacking.
- When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
- Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say "Let's understand that Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."
- What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts.
- The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated.
- According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have."
- While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.
- The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics. By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.
According to Obama the hacks continued until September 2016. According to ABC, Donna Brazile says the hacks didn't stop until after the elections in 2016. According to Crowdstrike the hacks continued into November.
Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said Russian hackers persisted in trying to break into the organization's computers "daily, hourly" until after the election -- contradicting President Obama's assertion that the hacking stopped in September after he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to "cut it out."-ABC
This time frame gives a lot of latitude to both hacks and leaks happening on that server and still agrees with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs). According to Bill Binney , the former Technical Director for the NSA, the only way that data could move off the server that fast was through a download to a USB stick. The transfer rate of the file does not agree with a Guciffer 2.0 hack and the information surrounding Guciffer 2.0 is looking ridiculous and impossible at best.
The DNC fiasco isn't that important of a crime. The reason I say this is the FBI would have taken control over material evidence right away. No law enforcement agency or Intel agency ever did. This means none of them considered it a crime Comey should have any part of investigating. That by itself presents the one question mark which destroys any hope Mueller has proving law enforcement maintained a chain of custody for any evidence he introduces.
It also says the US government under Barrack Obama and the victimized DNC saw this as a purely political event. They didn't want this prosecuted or they didn't think it was prosecutable.
Once proven it shows a degree of criminality that makes treason almost too light a charge in federal court. Rest assured this isn't a partisan accusation. Team Clinton and the DNC gets the spotlight but there are Republicans involved.
Further reading
- George Eliason: Ukraine's Voters Didn't Just Reject Nationalism, They Rejected Maidan, Bandera and the Revolution , April 23, 2019.
- Adam Carter: Guccifer 2.0: Game Over , October 6, 2019.
- Adam carter: Guccifer 2.0 Game Over – Year End Review , Disobediaent Media , December 25, 2018.
- A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack , The Nation , August 9, 2017.
- Adam Carter: Fancy Frauds, Bogus Bears & Malware Mimicry?! , Disobediaent Media, July 26, 2017.
- Veterans For Intelligence Sanity (VIPS) Memo to the President: Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence , Consortiumnews.com, July 24, 2017.
- Krebs on Security: Blowing the Whistle on Bad Attribution , August 18, 2017.
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Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com
Investigative Jouralist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the CEO Bill Larsen bought a small, Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to Silicon Valley.
MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate to reduce NSA spying on the public.
The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order to crack encrypted communications to write a back door for law enforcement.
Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike.
In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives.
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Dec 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Will Smith , 21 November 2019 at 12:32 AM
The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is Michael K Atkinson. ICIG Atkinson is the official who accepted the ridiculous premise of a hearsay 'whistle-blower' complaint; an intelligence whistleblower who was "blowing-the-whistle" based on second hand information of a phone call without any direct personal knowledge, ie 'hearsay'.The center of the Lawfare Alliance influence was/is the Department of Justice National Security Division, DOJ-NSD. It was the DOJ-NSD running the Main Justice side of the 2016 operations to support Operation Crossfire Hurricane and FBI agent Peter Strzok. It was also the DOJ-NSD where the sketchy legal theories around FARA violations (Sec. 901) originated.
Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016. That makes Atkinson senior legal counsel to John Carlin and Mary McCord who were the former heads of the DOJ-NSD in 2016 when the stop Trump operation was underway.
Michael Atkinson was the lawyer for the same DOJ-NSD players who: (1) lied to the FISA court (Judge Rosemary Collyer) about the 80% non compliant NSA database abuse using FBI contractors; (2) filed the FISA application against Carter Page; and (3) used FARA violations as tools for political surveillance and political targeting.
Yes, that means Michael Atkinson was Senior Counsel for the DOJ-NSD, at the very epicenter of the political weaponization and FISA abuse.
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Nov 29, 2019 | www.frontpagemag.com
The conspiracy theory that exposes the Democrats' desperation and panic.
Fri Nov 29, 2019 Oleg Atbashian 133 In the last few days, media talking heads have been saying the word "CrowdStrike" a lot, defining it as a wild conspiracy theory originating in Moscow. They were joined by Chris Wallace at Fox News, who informed us that president Trump and his ill-informed fans believe in a crazy idea that the DNC wasn't hacked by the Russians but by some Ukrainian group named CrowdStrike that stole the DNC server and brought it to Ukraine , and that it was Ukraine that meddled in our 2016 election and not Russia.A crazy idea indeed. Except that neither Trump nor his fans had ever heard of it until the Democrat-media complex condescendingly informed them that these are their beliefs.
Let's look at the facts:
- Fact 1. In 2016 the DNC hired the Ukrainian-owned firm CrowdStrike to analyze their server and investigate a data breach.
- Fact 2. CrowdStrike experts determined that the culprit was Russia.
- Fact 3. The FBI never received access to the DNC server, so the Russian connection was never officially confirmed and continues to be an allegation coming from the DNC and its Ukrainian-owned contractor.
- Fact 4. Absent the official verdict, other theories continue to circulate, including the possibility that the theft was an inside job by a DNC employee, who simply copied the files to a USB drive and sent it to WikiLeaks.
None of these facts was ever disputed by anyone. The media largely ignored them except for the part about the Russian hackers, which boosted their own, now debunked, wild conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian agent.
Now that Trump had asked the newly elected Ukrainian president Zelensky to look into CrowdStrike during that fateful July phone call, the media all at once started telling us that "CrowdStrike" is a code word for a conspiracy theory so insane that only Trump could believe in it, which is just more proof of how insane he is.
But if Trump had really said what Mr. Wallace and the media claim, Ukrainians would be the first to call him on it and the impeachment would've been over by now. Instead, Ukrainians back Trump every step of the way.
So where did this pretzel-shaped fake news come from, and why is it being peddled now ?
Note this is a classic case study of propaganda and media manipulation:
- Take an idea or a story that you wish to go away and make up an obviously bogus story with the same names and details as the real one.
- Start planting it simultaneously on media channels until the fake story supplants the real one, while claiming this is what your opponents really believe.
- Have various fact-checking outlets debunk your fake story as an absurd conspiracy theory. Ridicule those who allegedly believe in it. Better yet, have late night comedians do it for you.
- Once your opponent is brought down, mercilessly plant your boot on his face and never let up.
This mass manipulation technology had been tested and perfected by the Soviet propaganda machine, both domestically and overseas, where it was successfully deployed by the KGB. The Kremlin still uses it, although it can no longer afford it on the same grandiose scale. In this sense, the Democratic think tanks are the true successors of the KGB in deviousness, scope, and worldwide reach of fake narratives. How they inherited these methods from the KGB is a story for another day.
For a long time this technology was allowing the Democrats to delegitimize opposition by convincing large numbers of Americans that Republicans are
- Haters
- Racists
- Fascists
- Deniers of science
- Destroyers of the environment
- Heartless sellouts to corporate interests
- And so on - the list is endless.
The Soviet communists had aptly named it "disinformation," which a cut above the English word "misinformation." It includes a variety of methods for a variety of needs, from bringing down an opponent to revising history to creating a new historical reality altogether. In this sense, most Hollywood movies on historical subjects today disinform us about history, supplanting it with a bogus "progressive" narrative. The Soviet term for such art was "socialist realism."
Long story short, the Democrat-media complex has successfully convinced one half of the world that Trump is a Russian agent. Now they're acting as if they'd spent the last three years in a coma, unaware of any bombshell stories about collusion. And bombshell stories without any continuation are a telltale sign of fake narratives. The only consequence of these bombshells is mass amnesia among the foot soldiers.
The Trump-Russian outrage is dead, long live the Trump-Ukraine outrage. And when that outrage is dead, the next outrage that will be just outrageous.
The current impeachment narrative alleges that Trump used military aid as leverage in asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden (which implies the Democrats know Biden is dirty, otherwise why bother?). What's not in this picture is CrowdStrike. Even though Trump mentioned it in the phone call, it has nothing to do with the Bidens nor the Javelin missiles. CrowdStrike has nothing to do with impeachment. We're told it's just a silly conspiracy theory in Trump's head, that it's a nonissue.
But then why fabricate fake news about it and plant blatant lies simultaneously in all media outlets from Mother Jones to Fox News? Why risk being exposed over such a nonissue? Perhaps because it's more important than the story suggests.
Only a computer illiterate would think that CrowdStrike needed to take the physical DNC server to Ukraine in order to analyze it. Any computer can be cloned and its digital image can be sent within minutes anywhere on the planet in the form of ones and zeroes. It can also exist in multiple digital copies, carrying not just confidential archives, but also history logs and other content that can reveal to an expert whether the hacking occurred, and if so, by whom.
The copies of the DNC server on CrowdStrike computers are likely to hold the key to understanding what really happened during the 2016 election, the origin of the anti-Trump witch hunt, and the toxic cloud of lies that had been hanging over the world and poisoning minds during the last three years.
And now the new Ukrainian government might subpoena these copies from CrowdStrike and finally pass them to FBI experts, which should've been done three years ago. The danger of this happening is a much greater incentive for the Democrats to preemptively destroy Trump than all the dirt Joe Biden had been rolling in as Obama's vice president.
This gives the supposedly innocuous reference to CrowdStrike during Trump's call a lot more gravity and the previously incoherent part of the transcript begins to make sense.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.
If you read the transcript on the day it was released, you probably didn't understand what Trump was even talking about, let alone what had caused such a disproportionate outrage, complete with whistle blowing and calls for impeachment. What in that mild conversation could possibly terrify the Democrats so much? They were terrified because, unlike most Americans, the Democrats knew exactly what Trump was talking about. And now you know, too.
The fraudulent "CrowdStrike conspiracy" deflection is not a show of the Democrats' strength. Instead, It betrays their desperation and panic, which tells us that Trump is squarely over the target.
It also helps us to see who at Fox News can be trusted to tell us the truth. And it ain't Chris Wallace.
NAHALKIDES • a day ago ,
coolit10 NAHALKIDES • a day ago ,Fine dissection of the CrowdStrike story. Of course if the DNC was serious about finding out who breached their security they would have allowed the FBI to investigate. They didn't - which means they're covering something up.
🕊jr🕊 " Deep State Target " coolit10 • 13 hours ago ,And who doesn't have at least one backup system running constantly, I have two and am just a home user and the DNC would not have been dumb enough not to have one on the premises and one off site for safety and preservation and the FBI could have gotten to either one if they wanted to. DWS was involved in something very similar and the FBI backed off again. I thought the DNC and the FBI were on the same page and would have liked to find out how the "transfer" happened?
Herman Young 🕊jr🕊 " Deep State Target " • 12 hours ago ,Let's be honest, that FBI made no attempt to investigate it in the first place as they were as culpable in this crime as the DNC.
SteveTn6b NAHALKIDES • 16 hours ago ,Yet DOJ Mueller conclusively signed off on the unsubtaniated fact the Russians had hacked the DNC computers in his final Weissman Report. Just one more part of the curious Mueller report that was far more a CYA hit piece against future claims of Obama crimes, than an investigation of past Trump ones.
Herman Young SteveTn6b • 12 hours ago ,They know who breached their security. He'd dead!
Karen Herman Young • 9 hours ago ,Seth Rich - paper trail to Wikilinks needs to come out in any Senate impeachment trail since Democrats claim the Ukraine phone call was Trump's alleged downfall. CROWDSTRIKE was the only favor Trumps asked for.
Clasvi SteveTn6b • 13 hours ago ,We all know it was Seth Rich
Karen Clasvi • 9 hours ago ,you are spot on. it is amazing how they shut down the Seth Rich murder. The media was all to happy to shut it down.
undrprsr Clasvi • 6 hours ago ,Fox helped with that cover up
El Cid NAHALKIDES • 15 hours ago ,Yep, and Donna Brazile wrote in her book she feared for her life after Seth Rich was murdered, why's that if it was just a random attack?
Joe Clear NAHALKIDES • 12 hours ago ,There are two important facts to glean from this article:
1) Crowdstrike, the DNC contractor, is Ukrainian
2) that the famous server may have been backed up in Ukraine and not tampered with.From the MSM we were given the 'interpretation' that Trump is an idiot who believes that the DNC shipped the server with no changes to the Ukraine. No folks. He 'gets' technology and security. He actual ran a business! (imagine).
I'd love to hear that in Hillary's own voice. :) You know, cleaned with a cloth?
stanley castleberry NAHALKIDES • 12 hours ago ,They sure are, that being the killing of Seth Rich who copied the data to flash drive and gave it to Wikileaks.
Herman Young NAHALKIDES • 12 hours ago • edited ,They found out right away. Hence Rich was assassinated.
No Bread or Circuses • a day ago ,That pretty much sums it up. MSM in total cahoots on this too since they put the entire topic of the CROWDSTRIKE part of the phone call into the cone of silence.
Anacleto Mitraglia • 21 hours ago • edited ,The Left and media (One and the same within the "Deep State") have been playing "Three Card Monte" with America for a while; it stops now!
The "Impeachment" media show being run by the Lefty tool cretins in the House has NOTHING to do with wrong doing by President Trump. It has EVERYTHING to do with the fear that President Trump will expose the depth of the swamp and bring the criminals on the Left down to Justice!
We are s close to getting to the bottom of the conspiracies that threaten our nation. Time to make the America haters pay for the harm they have done to our nation!
We need open and in depth prosecution of the criminal activities of the Left. There needs to be LONG prison sentences and, yes, even executions for those that seek to undermine our nation.
People need to know that there our GRAVE penalties for betraying our nation!
God Bless President Trump!
God Bless America!Herman Young Anacleto Mitraglia • 12 hours ago ,In fact, when I first heard this story - that is: very recently - I was puzzled: why should a major party in the Country that invented IT and is still at its leading edge, ask an obscure firm of a crumbling, remote foreign State to do their IT security research? I'm not saying that Ukraine is a s++thole Country, but... you get me.
Either they have very much to hide, or they fear some closeted rightwing geek that works in any of the many leftist US technofirms. Or, CrowdStrike were involved from the beginning of the story, from the Steele dossier perhaps?
El Cid Anacleto Mitraglia • 15 hours ago • edited ,The whole Crowdstrike fiasco has been around for years - plus became a solid CYA part of the Mueller report too - just in case the Democrats needed to bury it later.
Cynthia Campbell • 19 hours ago ,don't you get it? The DNC is completely infiltrated by Ukrainian graft. Even Joe Biden was on the take. Why won't they run their IT? (there is no Research in IT here, just office software)
doc_who_cuts • 20 hours ago ,If you want to sell and deliver State Secrets and Intel to our enemies, then you (Obama, the Clintons, the DNC) simply make it easier for THEM to access. They have done this for years, and this is why they had to fill the DOJ, the FBI and the State Department with traitors and haters of America and American principles. Barack Hussein Obama, the Clintons, their evil administrations and even two-faced RINOS like McCain, Romney, and Jeff Sessions were actively involved. This is treason pure and simple, and all of the above could be legitimately and justifiably hung or shot without recourse, and rightly so!
Herman Young doc_who_cuts • 12 hours ago ,not seizing the DNC and hillary servers is the clearest case of OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE I know of in the last few years.
FRANCES LOUISE • a day ago ,Isn't it ironic, the Dems accuse Trump of "obstruction of justice".
elephant4life FRANCES LOUISE • 19 hours ago ,I have known about "Crowdstrike" since Dec. 2017. Pres. Trump is just subtlety introducing background on what will be the biggest story of treachery, subversion, treason and corruption ever. QAnon that the fakenews tries to vilify as a LARP has been dropping crumbs about "Crowdstrike", Perkins Coir, Fusion GPS, FVEY and so much more! Crowdstrike mentioned 7x in the last 2 years. I can't urge people enough to actually investigate the Q posts for themselves! You will be stunned at what you have been missing. Q which says "future proves past" and "news will unlock" what I see in the media now is old news to those of us following Q. Q told us that "Senate was the prize" "Senate meant more" that the investigations started in the House would now move to the Senate and all this that the Dems and Rinos have been trying to hide is going to be exposed. Fakenews corporate media has litterally written hundreds of hit pieces against Q - me knows "they doth protest to much" - Recent Q post told "Chairman Graham its time. Senate was the target"
Keep up with the Q posts and Pres. Trump's tweets in once place: https://qmap.pub/ - And if you are still having a hard time believing this is legit Pres. Trump himself has confirmed Q posts by "Zero Delta" drops - if you think this is fake - try and tweet within 1 minute of when Pres. Trump does BUT your tweet has to anticipate his! YOU have to tweet first and HE has to follow you within 1 minute. MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITY UNLESS you are in the same immediate space or communicating at the time of the tweets! To all you doubters that think Q is just a by chance scam - NO WAY. There have been MANY, MANY of these ZERO DELTA PROOFS over the last 2 years. The most recent was Nov. 20th.
Link will show you how much attention has been given to "debunking" Q - gotta wonder why
https://cdn.qmap.pub/images...Herman Young elephant4life • 12 hours ago ,Perkins-Coie is the real-world Milton, Chadwick & Waters. I'm willing to bet their industrial-sized shredders are working overtime.
Herman Young FRANCES LOUISE • 12 hours ago ,Unless Bleach-Bit got there first.
Grant Hodges • a day ago ,Crowdstrike in the dog who did not bark. The Democrat cone of silence they put on even the mention of the word has been the most damning clue this is where the real action is.
coolit10 Grant Hodges • a day ago ,The assertion that a digital image of the computer can be transmitted quickly all around the world is not necessarily correct in my experience as a cyber security analyst. I'm not an upper echelon type, but I am aware that it can take up to weeks to transmit such images depending on the hard disk, where it is, and the connections/network to your device creating the image. The FBI should have physically taken the device since there was a suspicion of wrong doing by Hillary Clinton. Had it been Donald Trump's computer I do not doubt the FBI would either have imaged it on the spot or taken the device.
Grant Hodges coolit10 • a day ago ,Last night I completely removed Catalina-Safari on my older Mac Book Air and re-installed Mohave-Safari from my backup to the day before I installed Catalina including the data and system just like it was before. It took around 5 hours and was cabled and not on Wi-Fi and it was perfect and reset the clock, my old e-mails and the newer ones as well. I can't believe being hooked into real broadband or fiber couldn't do the same in a relatively short period of time, but still significantly longer than a thumb drive or external hard drive.
El Cid Grant Hodges • 14 hours ago • edited ,One variable is how big your hard drive is. If it is a big drive at a remote location, say somewhere in California to the Midwest, it can take weeks for a forensic backup. I only say that because . . . well, I'm not allowed to say. But you get it.
The assertion is a figure of speech. Today's IT infrastructure companies sell the service of maintaining clones in real-time in two or more locations for safety purposes. VMware and other off-the-shelf products makes this kind of setup easy to deploy. Did Crowdstrike offer that service and did the DNC buy it, that is the question? And, if so, did Crowdstrike keep the image on their backups in Ukraine?
(Note: it is not obvious that such a setup would preserve the forensic data the FBI would be looking for, but its a start).
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Dec 28, 2017 | www.youtube.com
Our Hidden History , 4 days ago (edited)
Elizabeth Ferrari , 4 days agoThat Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.
He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies. That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season.
Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.
Few in the US know about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.
Esen B. , 3 days agoThis interview is a wonderful illustration of everything that is horribly wrong with corporate media. I hope it goes viral.
Lemmy Motorhead , 3 days agoHe is far right, he is calling "cockroaches" Central Asian/ex-USSR workers coming to Moscow and in general his tone is quite ultra-nationalistic.
Esen B. , 3 days agoVery well put! Everything that is labeled as "conspiracy theory" when aimed towards the West, is "respectable journalism" when aimed at Russia.
Esen B. , 3 days ago (edited)That is the video about fire arm legalization "cockroaches ", even if you are not Russian speaking it's pretty graphic to understand the idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ILxqIEEMg
trdi , 3 days ago (edited)And FYI - Central Asian workers do the low-wage jobs in Moscow, pretty like Mexicans or Puerto Ricans in US. Yet, that "future president" is trying to gain some popularity by labeling and demonizing them. Sounds familiar a bit?
Sendan , 3 days ago"definitelly ddissagree with that assertation about Alexei he's had nationalist views but he's definitely not far right and calling him a tool of US intelligence is pretty bs this is the exact same assertation that the Russian state media says about him."
I disagree that there is any evidence of Navalny being tool of US intelligence, but you are wrong for not recognizing that Navalny is ultranationalist. His public statements are indefensible. He is a Russian ultra nationalist, far right and a racist. Statements about cockroaches, worse than rats, bullets being too good etc - there is no way to misunderstand that.
MrChibiluffy , 3 days agoNavalny is a corrupt ex-politician just like his mentor that was caught red-handed taking a bribe from a German businessman "all on camera" at a restaurant. Most of corrupt politicians and businessmen that get caught by the Russian government always cry that they are politically repressed and the government is evil.
Navalnys brother was the owner of a small transport company that Navalny helped secure contracts with government enterprises '' anywhere in the world that would be a conflict of interest" but that's not why he is in jail! His brother is in jail for swindling the postal service company for transportation costs.
Yarrski , 3 days agoI know he said that i agree he has those views but that was in 2010.
Mohamed Elmaazi , 2 days ago@trdi I am a Russian. And I remember the early Navalny who made me sick to my stomach with absolutely disgusting, RACIST, anti-immigration commentaries. The guy is basically a NEO-NAZI who has toned down his nationalist diatribes in the past 10 or so years. Has he really reformed? I doubt it.
Nikita Gusarov , 2 days agoThis is a solid comment mate. Well thought out, with solid reasoning. How refreshing.
MrChibiluffy , 2 days agoMrChibiluffy, Navalny became relatively popular in Russia precisely at that time, especially during the White Ribbon protests in 2011/2012. I remember it very well myself.
I am Russian and I lived in Moscow at that time and he was the darling of the Russian opposition. He publicly defined his views and established himself back then and hasn't altered his position to this day.
What's more important is that around 2015 or so he made an alliance with the far-right and specifically Diomushkin who is a neo-nazi activist. I understand that people change their views, it's just that he hasn't.
annalivia1308 , 1 day agoNikita Gusarov it still feels like the best chance for some form of populist opposition atm. Even though they just rejected him he has a movement. Would you rather vote for Sobchak?
Ind Aus , 1 day agoYes. The US are looking to repeat Ukraine's regime change.
artemis12061966 , 1 day agoLets not forget that one reason many voted for Trump was his rhetoric about improving the peace-threatening antagonism towards Russia, especially in order to help resolve the situation in Syria. It's not like it was secret he was trying to hide. He only moderated his views somewhat when the Democrat-engineered anti-Russian smear campaign took off and there was a concerted effort to tie him to Russia.
Is it crime surround yourself with people that will help you fullfill your pledges?
RipTheJackR , 9 hours agoOr the death of Gary Webb, prosecution of whistleblowers.....like Private Manning...
Gabriel Olsen , 3 hours agoOur Hidden History... beautiful. Very well put mate :)
Luca Clemente , 4 days ago (edited)Yep, when he talked about murdering journalists, I paused the video and told my girlfriend about the murder of Michael Hastings. Oh an PS the USA puts journalists in Guantanamo. We play real baseball.
TheJagjr4450 , 3 days agoAaron Mate is a brilliant interviewer. He keeps a calm demeanor, but does not let his guest get away with any untruths or non sequiturs. This one of the many reasons I love The Real News. I encourage anyone who appreciates solid journalism to donate to The Real News.
dzedo53 , 4 days agoGREAT follow up questions Aaron... Harding did not expect to get a real reporter... he obfuscates and diverts to other issues because he can not EVER provide any evidence... Going to Moscow will not tell you anything about whether or not the DNC server was hacked.
Noah , 14 hours agoPutin is a bad guy. Therefore he colluded with Trump back in 1987 to help Trump win the election in 2016. Why is that so hard to see?? LOL.
jodi houts , 4 days agoLuke Harding is a complete and total idiot. He kept qualifying his arguments with "I've been to Moscow... I don't know if you know this, but I've been to Moscow..." and even at one point, "Some of my friends have been murdered." LOL, sure, whatever you say, Luke! Like you're so big time and such an all star journalist who isn't just trying to capitalize on the wild goose chase that is psychologically trapping leftists into delusions and wishful thinking.
KAREN Nichols , 4 days agoThank you Aaron Matè for calling out the bullshit. The dem party is dead until they take care of their own espionage and corruption.
david ackerman , 4 days agoThank you for "holding his feet to the fire"...I wish more media was more skeptical as well. Good work!
shadex08 , 4 days agoNSA monitors every communication over the internet. if the Russians hacked the DNC, there would be proof, and it would not take years to uncover. Look at the numbers: Clinton spent 2 billion, Russian "agents" spent 200k to "influence" the election. Great job Aaron for holding this opportunist's feet to the fire. Oh he's a story teller all right. You know a synonym of storyteller? LIAR!!!!
95percent air , 4 days agoGreat job Aaron, your work here makes me feel even better about my contribution to the real news.
Mal c.H , 4 days agoWow Aaron Matte NICE JOB. I'm only half through, I hope you don't make him cry. Do u make him cry? Did I hear this guy say he's ultimately a storyteller? Lol.
jodi houts , 4 days agoIt may seem like Trump has an alarming amount of associations with Russia, because he does.. that's how rich oligarchs work. But it's all just SPECULATION still. Why publish a book on this without a smoking gun to prove anything? Collusion isn't even a legal term, it's vague enough for people to make it mean whatever they want it to mean. People investigating and reporting on this are operating under confirmation bias. Aaron, you're always appropriately critical and you're always asking the right questions. You seem to be one of the few sane people left in media. Trump is a disgrace but there still is no smoking gun.
Fixel Heimer , 4 days agoAs he gets deeper in the weeds of speculation he starts attacking Aaron's credibility.
Hugh Mungus , 4 days agoOmg a bunch of unproven conspiracy crap.. Hes making so many factual wrong statements I don't know where to start here.. How would anyone in the years before his candidacy have thought Trump would gain any political relevance. I mean even the pro Hillary media thought until the end, their massive trump coverage would only help to get him NOT elected, but the opposite was the case. This guy is a complete joke as are his theses. Actually reminding me of the guardian's so called report about Russian Hacking in the Brexit referendum. Look here if you want to have a laugh http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/12/how-097-changed-the-fate-of-britain-not.html
Katie B , 4 days agoHis logic seems to be: Putin does things we don't like -> Trump getting elected is something we don't like -> Putin got Trump elected.
Antman4656 , 4 days agoCollusion Rejectionist! Ha Ha. Funniest interview ever. Well done Aaron. The Real News taking a stand for truth. So what's in the book if there's no evidence? Guardian journalism? Stop questioning the official narrative, oh and have you heard of Estonia. :)) ps that smiley face was not an admission of my working for the Kremlin.
maskedavenger777 , 4 days ago (edited)Best interview ever. Aaron held him to his theories and asked what evidence or proof he had and he didn't come up with one spec of evidence only hearsay and disputed theories. What a sad indictment this is on America. 1 year on a sensationalized story and still nothing concrete. What a joke and proof of gullibility to anyone who believes this corporate media Narritive. I guess at least they don't have to cover policies like the tax theft or net neutrality. This is why we need The Real news.
I'd rather have American business making business deals with Russia for things like hotels, rather than business deals with the Pentagon to aim more weapons at the Russians. When haven't we been doing business with Russians? We might as well investigate Cargill, Pepsi, McDonald's, John Deere, Ford, and most of our wheat farmers.
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Nov 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
As we noted earlier, a bombshell admission from Politico today exploring Obama's substantial behind the scenes influence as Democratic kingmaker : included in the lengthy profile on the day-to-day of the former president's personal office in the West End of Washington D.C. and his meeting with the field of Democratic candidates, is the following gem :
Image source: Getty"Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him."
And crucially, when asked about that prior statement reported in Politico, an Obama spokesperson did not deny that he said it.
The frank admission underscores what many independent analysts, not to mention prior damning WikiLeaks DNC disclosures , have pointed out for years: that the establishment controlling the Democratic party has continuously sought to rig the system against Bernie.
"Since losing 2016, Dem elites have waged a prolonged effort to stop Bernie. Bernie is the obvious answer to the neoliberal Clinton-Obama legacy voters rejected..." journalist Aaron Maté observed of the Politico quote.
Here's the stunning and deeply revealing section in full, which began by outlining Obama's 'advice-giving' throughout meetings with Democrat contenders including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and others :
Publicly, he has been clear that he won't intervene in the primary for or against a candidate , unless he believed there was some egregious attack. "I can't even imagine with this field how bad it would have to be for him to say something," said a close adviser. Instead, he sees his role as providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly and to unite the party when the nominee is clear.
There is one potential exception: Back when Sanders seemed like more of a threat than he does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him. (Asked about that, a spokesperson for Obama pointed out that Obama recently said he would support and campaign for whoever the Democratic nominee is.)
And a further deeply revealing but more laughable quote comes later as follows: "Obama designed his post-presidency in 2016, at a time when he believed Hillary Clinton would win and Biden would be out of politics." So the reality is... far from the idea that the Dem elites would back the actual nominee the party puts forward, clearly the die has already been cast against Bernie just like the last time around against Hillary in 2016.
Politico author Ryan Lizza later in the story quotes a "close family friend," who described that Obama's "politics are not strong left of center."
"I mean it's left, but he's nowhere near where some of the candidates are currently sitting, at least when he got himself elected," the source claimed.
This means in the mind of Obama and other top party influencers and kingmakers, Bernie and other popular outliers like Tulsi Gabbard have already long been sidelined. Tulsi, it should also be noted, is one of the couple of candidates who did not bother to stop by Obama's D.C. office for a 'blessing' and advice.
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Nov 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by John Solomon via JohnSolomonReports.com,
There are still wide swaths of documentation kept under wraps inside government agencies like the State Department that could substantially alter the public's understanding of what has happened in the U.S.-Ukraine relationships now at the heart of the impeachment probe.
As House Democrats mull whether to pursue impeachment articles and the GOP-led Senate braces for a possible trial, here are 12 tranches of government documents that could benefit the public if President Trump ordered them released, and the questions these memos might answer.
- Daily intelligence reports from March through August 2019 on Ukraine's new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his relationship with oligarchs and other key figures. What was the CIA, FBI and U.S. Treasury Department telling Trump and other agencies about Zelensky's ties to oligarchs like Igor Kolomoisky, the former head of Privatbank, and any concerns the International Monetary Fund might have? Did any of these concerns reach the president's daily brief (PDB) or come up in the debate around resolving Ukraine corruption and U.S. foreign aid? CNBC , Reuters and The Wall Street Journal all have done recent reporting suggesting there might have been intelligence and IMF concerns that have not been fully considered during the impeachment proceedings.
- State Department memos detailing conversations between former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko . He says Yovanovitch raised the names of Ukrainians she did not want to see prosecuted during their first meeting in 2016. She calls Lutsenko's account fiction. But State Department officials admit the U.S. embassy in Kiev did pressure Ukrainian prosecutors not to target certain activists. Are there contemporaneous State Department memos detailing these conversations and might they illuminate the dispute between Lutsenko and Yovanovitch that has become key to the impeachment hearings?
- State Department memos on U.S. funding given to the George Soros-backed group the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. There is documentary evidence that State provided funding to this group, that Ukrainian prosecutor sought to investigate whether that aid was spent properly and that the U.S. embassy pressured Ukraine to stand down on that investigation. How much total did State give to this group? Why was a federal agency giving money to a Soros-backed group? What did taxpayers get for their money and were they any audits to ensure the money was spent properly? Were any of Ukrainian prosecutors' concerns legitimate?
- The transcripts of Joe Biden's phone calls and meetings with Ukraine's president and prime minister from April 2014 to January 2017 when Hunter Biden served on the board of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings. Did Burisma or Hunter Biden ever come up in the calls? What did Biden say when he urged Ukraine to fire the prosecutor overseeing an investigation of Burisma? Did any Ukrainian officials ever comment on Hunter Biden's role at the company? Was any official assessment done by U.S. agencies to justify Biden's threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid if Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin wasn't fired?
- All documents from an Office of Special Counsel whistleblower investigation into unusual energy transactions in Ukraine. The U.S. government's main whistleblower office is investigating allegations from a U.S Energy Department worker of possible wrongdoing in U.S.-supported Ukrainian energy business. Who benefited in the United States and Ukraine from this alleged activity? Did Burisma gain any benefits from the conduct described by the whistleblower? OSC has concluded there is a "substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" involved in these activities.
- All FBI, CIA, Treasury Department and State Department documents concerning possible wrongdoing at Burisma Holdings. What did the U.S. know about allegations of corruption at the Ukrainian gas company and the efforts by the Ukrainian prosecutors to investigate? Did U.S., Latvian, Cypriot or European financial authorities flag any suspicious transactions involving Burisma or Americans during the time that Hunter Biden served on its board? Were any U.S. agencies monitoring, assisting or blocking the various investigations? When Ukraine reopened the Burisma investigations in March 2019, what did U.S. officials do?
- All documents from 2015-16 concerning the decision by the State Department's foreign aid funding arm, USAID, to pursue a joint project with Burisma Holdings. State official George Kent has testified he stopped this joint project because of concerns about Burisma's corruption reputation. Did Hunter Biden or his American business partner Devon Archer have anything to do with seeking the project? What caused its abrupt end? What issues did Kent identify as concerns and who did he alert in the White House, State or other agencies?
- All cables, memos and documents showing State Department's dealings with Burisma Holding representatives in 2015 and 2016. We now know that Ukrainian authorities escalated their investigation of Burisma Holdings in February 2016 by raiding the home of the company's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Soon after, Burisma's American representatives were pressing the State Department to help end the corruption allegations against the gas firm, specifically invoking Hunter Biden's name. What did State officials do after being pressured by Burisma? Did the U.S. embassy in Kiev assist Burisma's efforts to settle the corruption case against it? Who else in the U.S. government was being kept apprised?
- All contacts that the Energy Department, Justice Department or State Department had with Vice President Joe Biden's office concerning Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden or business associate Devon Archer. We now know that multiple State Department officials believed Hunter Biden's association with Burisma created the appearance of a conflict of interest for the vice president, and at least one official tried to contact Joe Biden's office to raise those concerns. What, if anything, did these Cabinet agencies tell Joe Biden's office about the appearance concerns or the state of the various Ukrainian investigations into Burisma?
- All memos, emails and other documents concerning a possible U.S. embassy's request in spring 2019 to monitor the social media activities and analytics of certain U.S. media personalities considered favorable to President Trump. Did any such monitoring occur? Was it requested by the American embassy in Kiev? Who ordered it? Why did it stop? Were any legal concerns raised?
- All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning efforts by individual Ukrainian government officials to exert influence on the 2016 U.S. election, including an anti-Trump Op-Ed written in August 2016 by Ukraine's ambassador to Washington or efforts to publicize allegations against Paul Manafort. What did U.S. officials know about these efforts in 2016, and how did they react? What were these federal agencies' reactions to a Ukrainian court decision in December 2018 suggesting some Ukrainian officials had improperly meddled in the 2016 election?
- All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning contacts with a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa and her dealings with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington or other Ukrainian figures. Did anyone in these U.S. government agencies interview or have contact with Chalupa during the time the Ukraine embassy in Washington says she was seeking dirt in 2016 on Trump and Manafort?
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Jan 04, 2011 | www.youtube.com
riccardo estavans , 4 months ago
Colin Shaw , 5 months ago Think Mackay , 5 months agoOrion's Ghost , 5 months agoBill Clinton destroyed the USA economy and middle class like no president has ever done. Bush II and Obama exacerbated the destruction by the hundred folds.
Fred Slocombe , 3 months ago (edited)I believe Hedges statement that "the true correctives to society were social movements that never achieved formal political power" is perhaps one of the most important things for each of us to understand.
Ali Naderzad , 3 months ago (edited)cubismo85 , 4 weeks ago16:50 GENIUS. WELL DONE. So true.go Chris !!!
Eris123451 , 3 days agohauntingly accurate in every aspect, im speehless
Brian Valero , 4 months agoI watched this with interest and curiosity and growing skepticism although he makes some killer points and cites some extremely disturbing facts; above all he accepts and uncritically so the American narrative of history.
jimmyolsenblues , 4 months agoThe message from democrats is "hey we're not bigots". Most people (repubs+dems) aren't. If they keep calling on that for energy the Dems will forever continue to lose. If they don't come back to the working class they might as well just call themselves conservatives.
Andy Russ , 3 years ago (edited)he did/wrote this in 2011, he really understood then how things are in 2019.
2009starlite , 5 months ago (edited)Prescient 'post-mortem' of the 2016 election
Aubrey De Bliquy , 2 days ago (edited)Those of us who seek the truth can't stop looking under every stone. The truth will set you free but you must share it with those who are ready to hear it and hide it from those who can hurt you for exposing it. MT
Clark WARS News , 1 day ago"A Society that looses the capacity for the sacred cannibalizes itself until it dies because it exploits the natural world as well as human beings to the point of collapse."
Rebel Scum , 5 months agoI learned something from watching this thank you powerful teacher love you ⭐
phuturephunk , 6 years agoI think he meant Washington State University which is in Pullman. The University of Washington is in Seattle. 16:43
davekiernan1 , 2 weeks agoDamn, he's grim...but he makes a whole lot of sense.
Rich Keal , 5 months agoLike Mr bon ribentrof said in monty Python. He's right you know...
kevin joseph , 5 days agoSearch YouTube for Dr. Antony Sutton the funding of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Act of 1871 as well. Take the Red Pill and go deeper.
Michael Maya , 5 months agoloony republicans? did they open the borders, legalize late abortions and outright infanticide?
Bryce Hallam , 1 week agoI've listened to this twice both twice it played on accident bcuz I had you tube on autoplay, it woke me up while I was sleeping but I'm glad it did.
Buddy Aces , 5 months agoSet the Playback Speed to: 1.25 . Great lecture.
VC YT , 5 months agoIt makes sense and we can smell it! Those varmints must be shown no mercy.
Orion's Ghost , 5 months agoTo get in the mood, I watched this lecture from behind some Hedges. :-)
Fred Slocombe , 3 months ago (edited)I believe Hedges statement that "the true correctives to society were social movements that never achieved formal political power" is perhaps one of the most important things for each of us to understand.
Ali Naderzad , 3 months ago (edited)15:05 The subjugation of Education 21:15 Theatrical Manipulation of Expectations 24:08 U.S. Debt and Borrowing
cubismo85 , 4 weeks ago16:50 GENIUS. WELL DONE. So true.go Chris !!!
Eris123451 , 3 days agohauntingly accurate in every aspect, im speehless
penny kannon , 5 months agoI watched this with interest and curiosity and growing skepticism although he makes some killer points and cites some extremely disturbing facts; above all he accepts and uncritically so the American narrative of history. The Progressive movement, for example, (written into American history as being far more important that it ever really was,) unlike Socialism or Communism was primarily just a literary and a trendy intellectually movement that attempted, (unconvincingly,) to persuade poor, exploited and abused Americans that non of those other political movements, (reactive and grass-roots,) were needed here and that capitalism could and might of itself, cure itself; it conceded little, promised much and unlike either Communism or Socialism delivered fuck all. Personally I remain unconvinced also by, "climate science," (which he takes as given,) and which seems to to me to depend far too much on faith and self important repeatedly insisting that it's true backed by lurid and hysterical propaganda and not nearly enough on rational scientific argument, personally I can't make head nor tail of the science behind it ? (it may well be true, or not; I can't tell.) But above all and stripped of it his pretensions his argument is just typical theist, (of any flavor you like,) end of times claptrap all the other systems have failed, (China for example somewhat gives the lie to death of Communism by the way and so on,) the end is neigh and all that is left to do is for people to turn to character out of first century fairly story. I wish him luck with that.
Brian Valero , 4 months agoCHRIS HEDGES YOUR BOOK MUST BE HIGH SCHOOL STUDY!!! wtkjr.!!!
jimmyolsenblues , 4 months agoThe message from democrats is "hey we're not bigots". Most people (repubs+dems) aren't. If they keep calling on that for energy the Dems will forever continue to lose. If they don't come back to the working class they might as well just call themselves conservatives.
Andy Russ , 3 years ago (edited)he did/wrote this in 2011, he really understood then how things are in 2019.
Jean Lloyd Bradberry , 5 months agoPrescient 'post-mortem' of the 2016 election
Mike van Wijngaarden , 4 months agoShared! Excellent presentation!
Michael Hutz , 1 month ago (edited)What if, to fail is the objective? That would mean they planned everything that's happened and will happen.
Bill Mccloy , 4 months ago (edited)Loved Chris in this one. First time I've heard him talking naturally instead of reading verbatim from a text which makes him sound preachy.
Herr Pooper , 4 months agoChris is our canary in a coal mine! Truly a national treasure and a champion for humanity. And he's more Christian than he thinks he is.
ISIS McCain , 4 months agoI have always loved Chris Hedges, but ever since becoming fully awake it pains me to see how he will take gigantic detours of imagination to never mention Israel, AIPAC or Zionism, and their complete takeover of the US. What a shame.
UtopiaMinor666 , 8 years agoHey Chris, please look up Dr. Wolfe and have a big debate with him!!! I believe you guys would mostly hit it off, but please look him up!
Terri Pebsworth , 3 months agoThe reality of this is enough to make you want to cry.
Russell Olausen , 4 months agoExcellent! And truer today (2019) than even in 2010.
John Doe , 3 weeks agoNotes From the Underground,my favourite book.
George C. May , 2 months agoGosh I thought it was being broadcasted today. Then I heard it and it was really for today.
L N , 5 months agoNot once did I hear the word corruption which in this speech sums up the bureaucratic control of the country !
Laureano Luna , 4 months agoI think Chris Has saved my life! ✊🏼✌️ 👍🏼🌅
andrew domenitz , 4 months ago43:53 Cicero did not even live the imperial period of Rome...
Thomas Simmons , 5 months agoThe continued growth of unproductive debt against the low or nonexistent growth of GDP is the recipe for collapse, for the whole world economic system.
Alexandros Aiakides , 2 weeks ago (edited)I agree with Chris about the tragedy of the Liberal Church. Making good through identity politics however, is every bit as heretical and tragic as Evangelical Republican corrupted church think, in my humble, Christian opinion.
Heathcliff Earnshaw , 4 months ago div clThe death of the present western hemisphere governments and "democratic" institutions must die right now for humanity to be saved from the zombies that rule it. 'Cannibalization" of oikonomia was my idea, as well as of William Engdahl. l am glad hearing Hedges to adopt the expression of truth. ( November 2019. from Phthia , Hellas ).
ass="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> Gosh , especially that last conclusion ,was terrific so I want to paste the whole of that Auden poem here:- September 1, 1939 W. H. Auden - 1907-1973
... ... ...
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
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[May 16, 2020] Tucker Adam Schiff should resign Published on May 16, 2020 | www.youtube.com
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[May 10, 2020] Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security by Kevin R. Brock Published on May 10, 2020 | thehill.com
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[May 05, 2020] UK government experince with the White Helmets and the Skripal affair definitly halps in anti-china propaganda. Published on May 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
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[Apr 14, 2020] The media has been largely taken over by a criminal gang (Operation Mockingbird), and the same gang has taken over the Democrat party Published on Apr 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
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[Jan 21, 2020] WaPo columnist endorses all twelve candidates Published on Jan 21, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
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[Dec 04, 2019] Ukrainegaters claim that Trump Reduced the USA empire 'Global Commitments' was fraudulent from the very beginning. Trump is yet another imperial president who favours the "Full spectrum Dominance; The problem is that the time when the USA can have it are in the past. Europe finally recovered from WWII losses and that alone dooms the idea Published on Dec 04, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
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[Dec 04, 2019] June 4th, 2017 Crowdstrike Was at the DNC Six Weeks by George Webb Published on Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com
[Dec 04, 2019] Cyberanalyst George Eliason Claims that the "Fancy Bear" Who Hacked the DNC Server is Ukrainian Intelligence – In League with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike Published on Dec 04, 2018 | www.reddit.com
[Dec 04, 2019] Fancy Bear - Conservapedia Published on Dec 04, 2019 | www.conservapedia.com
[Dec 04, 2019] June 2nd, 2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams by George Webb Published on Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com
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[Nov 30, 2019] CrowdStrike: a Conspiracy Wrapped in a Conspiracy Inside a Conspiracy by Oleg Atbashian Published on Nov 29, 2019 | www.frontpagemag.com
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[Nov 24, 2019] Chris Hedges on Death of the Liberal Class - YouTube Published on Jan 04, 2011 | www.youtube.com
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